The Girls He Adored elp-1

by Jonathan Nasaw

  But there was one thing the clothes all had in common: the color scheme. Warm Spring on the seasonal charts. Delicate tones. The neutrals were camel browns, creams, and grays. Some true greens and golden yellows, but no true blues, only aquas, turquoises, and teals.

  Not quite a redhead's palette, though: the clothes on the red end of the spectrum were not the brighter shades that would have flattered a classic redhead. Instead, salmons, corals, pumpkins, peaches, and roses, the softer pastels she herself had favored before frosting her own strawberry blond hair.

  Irene backed away from the closet, her mind spinning. The women who had left these clothes behind-were they all strawberry blonds? Was that why that hideous creature in the glorious strawberry blond wig had plucked her hair out-to examine the roots?

  The implications were unthinkable. Suddenly Irene felt unbearably claustrophobic. She staggered over to the small four-paned sash window, opened it, stuck her head out. As she gulped in the sweet mountain air, she caught a glimpse of Maxwell trudging across the meadow toward the house, his head down, his blond hair white in the starlight.

  I will stay alive, Irene told herself, quickly pulling her head back inside and lowering the window again. Whatever's going on here, I will stay alive.

  Will not, replied the little voice in her head.

  52

  For a motel that rented rooms by the day or hour, the beds in the Sleep-Tite were fairly comfortable. The alarm on Pender's watch woke him from a sound sleep at seven. At seven-thirty he phoned Thom Davies, the British-born database specialist.

  “Morning, T. D. Hope I didn't wake you.”

  “Pender? For God's sake, man, it's eight-thirty on a Sunday morning.”

  “It's only seven-thirty here, and I'm up.”

  “Central time? I thought you were keeping regular in Prunedale.”

  “I'm in Dallas. How's my account in the old favor bank?”

  “I believe you still owe me several lunches and your firstborn child.”

  “Care to make a deposit on my second-born?” He told Davies what he was looking for.

  “I'll get on it first thing tomorrow morning,” said Davies.

  “Not quite what I had in mind.”

  “Ed, it's Sunday morning.”

  “He's averaging two murders a day since he escaped, Thom. You do the math.”

  “How about a shit and a shower? Do I have time for a shit and a shower?”

  “You could probably skip the shower,” replied Pender. “I doubt there's going to be anybody else in the office.”

  Plano was a northeastern suburb of Dallas, though the town had enough of a history that it preferred not to think of itself as suburban. “It's plain to see/Plano is the place to be,” read the Chamber of Commerce sign.

  The Hughes house was a white colonnaded near-mansion in the pricey Lakeside addition. Pender, a Yankee to the bone, half expected Hattie McDaniels or Butterfly McQueen to open the front door. Instead the maid who answered the doorbell was Hispanic; Pender wondered if that represented progress.

  The maid informed Pender that Senor Hughes wasn't home, but he could hear voices out back. He turned and started down the walk, then cut around the side of the house. Sure enough, Horton Hughes was sitting poolside, wearing a white polo shirt and twill slacks, Italian loafers, no socks, reclining on an upholstered chaise longue, reading the Sunday paper. Behind him a tanned twentysomething brunette in a well-filled white bikini was swimming laps in the azure pool. Whitewashed wrought-iron chairs were grouped around a whitewashed wrought iron table shaded by a yellow canvas umbrella.

  Hughes looked up. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Special Agent Pender, FBI.” As he flashed his credentials, Pender realized he must look like day-old shit in his wrinkled plaid sport coat, with his bald head clumsily bandaged under a bloodstained tweed hat.

  “Is it Donna?” asked Hughes. “Have they found Donna?”

  It seemed to Pender that there was a strange note of ambivalence to the tone, as if Hughes weren't entirely sure which answer he was hoping for, yes, no, dead, alive. He decided to Columbo the man.

  “Well sir, Mr. Hughes, we think we've identified the individual she left with. May I ask you a few questions?”

  “I suppose,” Hughes answered reluctantly. “But we've been through all this.”

  “Aren't you going to introduce me to the young lady?” Pender nodded toward the girl in the pool.

  “That's Honey.”

  She rolled onto her back and waved, then went back to her laps. Pender asked Hughes if Honey were his daughter, and received a terse, thin-lipped “No.”

  Now Pender understood why Hughes had seemed so ambivalent about Donna-he'd turned her in for a newer model.

  In response to Hughes's shouted orders, the maid brought out another china cup and saucer for Pender and poured his coffee for him. Pender sat with his back to the pool and asked Hughes to tell him about Donna's disappearance.

  “Is there really anything to be gained by going through all this again?” asked Hughes. “I've told the police, I was out of town that week. I got home, Donna was gone, along with her suitcase, her good jewelry, and her Lexus. I haven't heard from her since.”

  “Do you know which clothes she packed?”

  “I'm afraid I didn't pay all that much attention to Donna's clothes, other than that she bought too many and they cost too much.”

  Two aggressive non-answers so far. Pender decided to abandon the affective approach and push back a little. Though he could empathize with the haughty rich, put himself in their shoes for the sake of an interview, as a poor boy from Cortland Pender had no objection to trying the opposite approach.

  “But the jewelry, that you had no problem identifying as missing?” he asked in a deliberately provocative manner.

  “Of course not. I bought most of it for her myself. And I can't say I approve of your tone, Agent Prender.”

  Oh-ho. “That's Pender. Had Mrs. Hughes given any indication that she was troubled or unhappy?”

  “No more than usual.” Hughes leaned forward as if to impart a confidence. “I've never pretended we had an ideal marriage, Agent Pender — is that right? — but frankly, that's none of your goddamned business.”

  “How about Honey there? Did she know Mrs. Hughes?”

  Hughes shoved his chair back from the table, the metal feet screeching on the patio tiles, and rose haughtily to his feet. “This interview is over, Agent Pender. If you have any further questions, contact my-”

  Pender ignored the dramatics, took a sip from the china cup; it really was very good coffee. “Hey there, Honey,” he called over his shoulder-his back was still to the pool.

  “Hey, G-man,” called the girl.

  “Did you know Mrs. Hughes?”

  “I surely did-she was my momma's best friend.”

  Pender turned around, an arm draped over the back of his chair. “Does your momma know you're sleeping with her best friend's husband?”

  “Why not?” replied Honey. “She did.”

  “Just a goddamn minute,” said Hughes.

  Pender turned back to him. He could hear Honey climbing out of the pool behind him, breathing hard, dripping water onto the tiles. “I like interviewing her a whole lot better than you, Mr. Hughes. Think her parents would be equally forthcoming?”

  The girl padded across the tiles, toweling off her long black hair. The combination of the raised arms and the vigorous toweling imparted an interesting motion to her bosom. “You want to talk to Momma, you better get there before her third mimosa. As for Daddy, he's so long gone the only way she even remembers his name is she reads it off the alimony checks.”

  “How about you then, Honey? Did you see Mrs. Hughes before her disappearance?”

  Pender looked down at his coffee cup as she wrapped the towel around her head in a turban and adjusted her bikini top unselfconsciously, then sat down next to him and poured herself a cup of coffee from the silver carafe. Hughes sat down as
well, somewhat anticlimactically.

  “Sure, about two weeks before. And I was not screwing Horty here until the bed was good and cold, I'll have you know.”

  She was a spoiled little rich bitch, but Pender found himself liking her-at least she was honest. An odd crime statistic he'd run across somewhere surfaced in his mind: wealthy Plano, Texas, had the highest per capita rate of teenage heroin-related deaths in the country in 1996 or '97, he couldn't remember which. “Were there any signs she was having an affair?”

  “I can't picture it. I mean, I can't even picture her doin' it with Horty. The woman did not exactly ex-hude sexuality. 'Course, last time I saw her she didn't know about Horty and Momma-walkin' in on them the way she did mighta put a little itch in her britches, payback being a way of life 'round here.”

  “Is that true, Mr. Hughes? Mrs. Hughes found you in bed with her best friend?”

  No answer. Pender didn't press it. Oh, Donna, he thought, to the tune of the old Richie Valens song. No wonder you ran away from home. Part of him wanted to believe that she'd run away with someone other than Casey, but it didn't seem likely. If she'd been poor, then sure, maybe she'd have hit the road and not made contact for a year. But she was far from poor, and in Pender's experience, nobody walked away from money.

  They did sometimes walk away with it, though. “I understand all of Mrs. Hughes's bank accounts were untouched, Mr. Hughes. And of course there's been no credit card activity. Would she have had any other source of cash readily available to her?”

  “I've already answered that question,” said Hughes.

  Oh-ho. Foolish answer. Guilty answer. It probably wouldn't mean much for the investigation, but several of the other strawberry blonds had disappeared with amounts of cash proportionate to their means. “What was it, a wall safe?”

  “I don't know what-”

  “If you tell me here and now, I promise it goes no further. If not, the IRS is always happy to cooperate with the FBI-and vice versa.”

  “Yes, it was a wall safe.”

  “Excellent. How much did she leave with?”

  “Twenty grand in hundreds and twenties, best I could tell.”

  “Good enough,” said Pender, who over the years had developed a sixth sense about just how far you could push an interview. “Thank you for your cooperation. And now I'll leave you two to your Sunday. Here's my card-use the sky pager number if you think of anything. And Honey, if I could get your last name and your mother's address?”

  “It's Comb. I was just heading home myself-you can follow me if you want.”

  “Honey Comb,” repeated Pender, amused.

  “Don't even,” said the girl. “I've already heard every joke there is.”

  53

  Just stay alive…

  Irene slipped out of bed and crossed the room to the window. It had been a brutal night. Hard to say which was worse, the fitful bouts of nightmare-ridden sleep or the wide-awake three A.M. dreads. Probably the latter-at least you could wake up from the nightmares.

  Eventually, though, she had managed to arrive at an uneasy truce with her terror by continually reminding herself that so far, most of what she'd told Barbara had come true. Maxwell wanted her help, which meant he needed to keep her alive. And where there's life, there's hope, wasn't that what everybody said? A cliche, perhaps, but one that she would have to teach herself to appreciate on a gut level.

  In the meantime: just stay alive. Irene parted the white muslin curtains, raised the window, took a deep breath. Mountain air, morning dew, sweet meadow grass, Christmas tree tang of the Doug firs. The two-horned mountain to the west was blue-green and shrouded in mist; the meadow grass riffled in the wind, pale green with an undertone of shimmering gold.

  And now, in the daylight, Irene was able to make out a peculiar structure half-hidden in the high grass of the meadow about a hundred yards from the house, not far from where Maxwell had been walking the night before. She stuck her head out of the window for a better look, and saw what appeared to be a sunken greenhouse the size of an Olympic swimming pool, covered by an opaque Plexiglas bubble rising only a few feet above ground level.

  Then it dawned on Irene that the window she was leaning out of was only a little narrower than her shoulders, and that directly below her was the roof of the screened-in porch. She eyeballed the two-story drop and realized that there was nothing to prevent her from climbing out the window and lowering herself to the porch with a bedsheet rope.

  Not yet, though, she told herself. Not until you've figured out a way to get past the dogs or over the electrified fence.

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door. With a guilty start, Irene pulled her head back inside and closed the window as quietly as she could. “Just a minute.” She found an apricot-colored velour bathrobe in the closet and slipped it on over her nightgown, then opened the door.

  Max, in a multicolored hibiscus-print Hawaiian shirt and modishly baggy shorts. “Good morning, Irene. Did you sleep well?”

  Did I sleep well? After being kidnapped and nearly raped, did I sleep well? Oh you rotten s.o.b. “Yes, thank you. Did you remember to call somebody about Bernadette?”

  Max smiled reassuringly. “I called the Trinity County Sheriff's Department last night. I had to take the car phone up to the hayloft of the barn to get a signal. By now, Bernadette's probably resting comfortably in the bosom of her family. Are you ready for breakfast?”

  “You know, I think I am.” To her surprise, Irene realized that she was absolutely famished. The good news about Bernadette had restored her appetite.

  The kitchen was wood-paneled, with a hardwood floor, a gorgeous cast-iron wood-burning stove, now fitted with electric burners, and a round-shouldered old Amana refrigerator. The kitchen table was covered with a hand-embroidered linen tablecloth. Maxwell waved Irene to the chair at the head of the table, then opened the oven door and removed a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon.

  “I'll pop some toast in for you,” he said, setting the plate down in front of Irene. She had taken a quick shower and was wearing a rust-colored cotton blouse over a pair of white cotton shorts.

  “Can I ask you a question, Max?”

  “You can ask.” He poured two cups of coffee from an old-fashioned bubble-topped percolator on the stove, then sat down across from Irene.

  “Who was the woman I met last night?”

  “Aw-aw-all in good time, lady.”

  Jimmy Stewart. Max's celebrity impressions seemed to be a coping mechanism for avoiding stressful topics-of which the woman in the mask was apparently one. Irene decided not to press him; she changed the subject. “These eggs are delicious.”

  “They don't get any fresher-I took 'em out of the coop this morning.”

  “Aren't you having any?”

  “We've already eaten-we keep farmer's hours around here.”

  “What do you grow?”

  “Silver bells and cockle shells and- No, I'm kidding. Just a truck garden-and of course the chickens.”

  But Irene's mind had already completed the Mother Goose rhyme Maxwell had abandoned so precipitously. Pretty maids all in a row.

  While Irene finished breakfast, Maxwell set up an impromptu psychiatrist's office in the woods behind the house. He was stoked as he dragged the furnishings up from the basement storeroom and down the path. For years he'd daydreamed about achieving fusion, real mastery over the others, not just sporadic control. And now, his daydream was on the verge of becoming a reality.

  It wouldn't be easy, he knew-it would take work and commitment from both himself and Irene. He'd have to be honest with her, or as honest as their unusual circumstances would permit, and he'd have to allow her access to the others-and vice versa. But if it achieved the desired effect, it would be well worth it.

  And if it didn't work out? Well, he and the others would still have enjoyed the opportunity, for the first time in their lives, of telling their story to a sympathetic, understanding professional. And afterward, no matter how it tur
ned out, they'd all have the luscious Dr. Cogan to share, for however long she lasted.

  It's only therapy, Irene tried to tell herself as Maxwell led her down the dappled path. You've done it a thousand times before.

  Still she was rocked, momentarily disoriented, when she first came in sight of the office he'd set up in the small clearing. A padded Windsor-style myrtlewood chair and a notebook and pen for her, a padded redwood-slatted chaise for himself, a small round three-legged table placed in the angle between the chair and the head of the chaise to hold a box of tissues and an ashtray. A Freudian layout in a Jungian wood. And the sweet smell of the needles, the mushroomy smell of the loam, reminded her sharply of the redwood grove near Lucia, of the pine grove in the Trinities- she understood now that the forest was Maxwell's safe place.

  “Are we missing anything?” he asked her.

  “Some water, perhaps. Therapy can be thirsty work.”

  After fetching a pitcher and two plastic glasses, Maxwell lay down on the chaise. Irene positioned the Windsor chair beside his left shoulder, crossed her legs, and waited with the stenographer's notebook in one hand and a green Uniball pen in the other.

  She wasn't sure at first how to begin. “Do you think you might be up for another regression?” she asked him.

  “NO!” Max's shout echoed through the forest, flushing the crows and jays from their boughs. Then, quietly but firmly: “No more hypnosis.”

  Irene felt the fear coursing through her system-she had been reminded of how vulnerable she was, dealing with a volatile and dangerous multiple without any of the customary safeguards.

  Calmly, calmly: “Of course you don't have to do anything you don't want to, Max. But if we're going to have any chance of success here, the other alters are going to have to be included.”

  “Not a problem-I can take care of it.”