Blowing Smoke

by Barbara Block

  The old-fashioned wooden screen door was ajar. I used the edge of my T-shirt to pull it open and went inside. The dogs came in with me. Zsa Zsa followed the little white dog over to a bowl filled with water near the door. I glanced around the living room while both of them began to drink. The room seemed tidy enough. If a fight between Shana and her killer had occurred, it hadn’t happened in here.

  The sofa and the two armchairs were covered with bright yellow-and-orange Indian print cloths and had a variety of contrasting cotton print pillows sitting on them. I walked over to the coffee table. It was piled high with magazines—mostly fashion. A small brown shipping box sat next to it. One of Tiffany’s tell-tale blue boxes was nestled inside. I took off the cover, lifted out the dark blue jewel case, and flipped it open with my fingernail. Two good-sized pearland-ruby earrings stared at me. A small card had been placed along the top of the case.

  Carefully picking it up along the edge, I took it out and read it. Someone had typed the word love on it in capital letters. Not written. Typed. Meaning the sender didn’t want his handwriting identified. It was probably Geoff, I decided as I put everything back the way I found it and went into the kitchen. He had the money and the taste. Unless Shana had been seeing someone else as well. It was also interesting that the earrings were still in the shipping box. Shana had to have opened the box already. Known what was inside. Had she been going to send them back? It certainly seemed that way.

  I glanced around the kitchen. The sink was filled with dirty dishes. At least two days’ worth. A frying pan, crusted with egg, sat on the front burner of the small, old-fashioned stove. Obviously, Shana’s sense of neatness did not extend to this room. From the look of it, Shana had made herself a salad and a couple of eggs for dinner. I moved on to the counter. A box of opened crackers lay on its side, its contents half-spilled out next to two water glasses. I bent over to sniff them. The smell of Jameson hit my nostrils. Evidently, Shana had started drinking in here and then brought the bottle with her to the pool.

  But had she used one glass, then another when she’d dirtied the first, the way Manuel did, or had she had a visitor? Hopefully, the police would be able to tell. I opened the refrigerator. The contents were depressing, especially since they reminded me of my own. A box of baking soda, a couple of yogurts, a six-pack of beer, an orange that looked past its prime, and a wedge of moldy cheese.

  I moved on to the bedroom. The room was small, made smaller by the mess it was in. Looking at it, it was hard to tell if someone had gone through her things or if this was the way Shana lived. The floor was littered with clothes. So was the chair. I picked up a bra that had been flung over the side of the bed. It was made of expensive white lace. I put it back and picked up the teddy lying next to it and peeked at the label. It came from Switzerland. I recognized the name. The thing probably cost three hundred dollars, if not more. I put that down, too, and picked up a black microfiber backpack hanging off the foot of the bed. Prada. That was worth six hundred dollars right there. Shana had definitely been doing well for herself—until tonight.

  The mattress yielded as I sat down on the edge of Shana’s bed and looked at her nightstand. She had a set of bright pink wooden Buddhist prayer beads sitting around a light green aromatherapy candle with the word peace written on it. A little ways away was an envelope addressed to her. I nudged it over with my thumb and read the return address. The Center for Enlightened Self-Awareness. Wolfe Island. Which was located between the United States and Canada, about an hour to an hour-and-a-half ride from Syracuse. I couldn’t be sure—it was hard to make out the date because the numbers were so faint as to be nearly illegible—but it looked as if the envelope had been postmarked two days ago. I opened it. The letter gave evidence of having been read and reread.

  “Dear Shana,” it said. “I understand your problem. You seem to be caught in a karmic riptide. But things are not always as they seem. There are ways to reverse this tide. Perhaps you would care to meet. I have some suggestions that may surprise you. Until then, remember that a problem is not a problem but a missed opportunity. Love, Pat.”

  So Pat was still alive. Or at least she had been. Shana and Pat. One woman was dead, and one was gone. I was wondering if the two were related when I heard a cough. I looked up. Moss Ryan was standing by the door. His hair was tousled. He was wearing a pair of dark navy pants and a partially buttoned white shirt.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “Reading a letter.”

  “You shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t even be here. You’re compromising the crime scene. Rose wants to see you,” he said as I folded the letter up, slipped it into its envelope, and put it back where I found it. “I’ll wait here until the police come.”

  He was still at the door when I walked out, but something told me that if I doubled back I’d find him doing what I’d been doing when he arrived.

  Rose was waiting for me in the room in which I’d last seen her. She was sitting on the sofa. Geoff was next to her, patting her hands. She seemed to have gotten smaller.

  “Leave us,” she told Geoff when Zsa Zsa and I came in.

  “But . . .” he protested, clearly surprised.

  “I need to talk to Robin alone for a minute,” Rose told him, her voice surprisingly strong.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Geoff got up reluctantly and slowly walked to the door. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”

  “Thank you.” She watched Geoff leave. Then she told me to close the door. “Make sure it’s shut all the way,” she instructed. “What happened to your jaw?” she asked when I returned.

  “Your son punched me.”

  “I knew Sanford was wrong about letting him take up boxing,” she murmured to herself as she dabbed at the edge of her eye with a tissue. Then she folded her hands together and placed them in her lap. “More importantly, Geoff tells me Shana’s dead and that you think Louis might have had something to do with it.”

  I hadn’t said that to Geoff. But I didn’t correct the statement. Mostly because it could be true. “It’s possible.”

  Rose blinked. I noticed her left iris seemed higher than her right one. I wondered if her stroke had caused it. “Will the police think so, too?”

  “They might.”

  Rose studied her hands for a moment. “In your opinion, should Moss contact a criminal lawyer and arrange for representation for my son?”

  “I don’t think it would be a bad idea.”

  “I see.” Rose lapsed into silence again. Another minute went by before she spoke. “And Pat? What about her?”

  I told her about the letter I’d found in Shana Driscoll’s room.

  Rose leaned forward slightly. “Do you think she’s still there?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “I want you to go there and see if you can find her.”

  “Why?”

  Rose stuffed the tissue into the sleeve of her caftan. “Because I have unfinished business that I need to discuss with her.”

  “Fair enough. Supposing she is there. Then what?”

  “Tell her I need to speak to her.”

  “What if she doesn’t want to speak to you?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “But if it does,” I insisted.

  “Then we’ll deal with that then. I’ve lived too long to be worried about ifs and maybes.”

  I studied Rose’s face. “Is there anything else I should know?”

  “No.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “Absolutely.” She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the sofa. “Tell Geoff to come in on your way out,” she said. Her eyes were still closed. “I need to put my makeup on before the police arrive.”

  But Rose wasn’t going to get the chance, because when I stepped outside, I could see a squad car making its way up the driveway.

  Chapter Fourteen

  James came darting o
ut from behind a bush as I put the key in the lock of my door and gave me a reproachful meow. It was a little before six o’clock in the morning, and I’d been up for almost twenty-four hours now. My jaw was throbbing, my bones ached, and my clothes smelled. All I wanted to do was strip, jump in the shower, and go to sleep. Feeding cats was not on my “to do” list.

  “Scat. Get your own breakfast. Go kill a mouse.”

  But James gave me his your-life-is-going-to-be-a-living-hell-if-you-don’ t-give-me-something-to-eat look, and I capitulated and went into the kitchen and opened up his can of food and put it in a dish. As I was rinsing out the can, I noticed that the message light on my answering machine was flashing. I shouldn’t have played it.

  I heard Pat Humphrey’s voice say, “I see you in the dark. I see blood.”

  “And I see you in jail,” I said to the machine.

  Fuck her. I wondered if this is what she’d done to Rose. Setting her up. Then moving in for the kill. Probably was. She was clever. I’d give her that much. I got a glass out of the sink. Then I went to the refrigerator and put a couple of ice cubes in it. I liked the sound of their clink as I dropped them into the glass. It was reassuring. I shouldn’t be doing this. Screw that, too.

  For months after Murphy died I’d sat in the dark by my living room window with a razor blade making little cuts on my fingertips to distract myself from the pain I felt. I’d never told that to anyone. It was my nasty little secret. Just thinking about that time again made my stomach twist. The not sleeping. The not eating. The crying I couldn’t control. The going to sleep at night hoping it would be better and waking up each morning feeling the same as the night before. I went into the living room and poured myself a hefty shot of scotch. Before I knew it, it was gone. I poured myself another one and sipped it, admiring the color of the liquid in the glass. That warm golden brown. The color of autumn. I’d finally managed to tuck all of that Murphy stuff in a little box and seal the lid, and I was damned if I was going to let someone open it.

  I went back into the kitchen and dialed star 69. I was in luck. I got the number. I dialed it. A recording telling me I’d reached the Center for Enlightened Self-Awareness came on. “No one is here right now,” a voice chirped above the sound of bells and chanting. “But your message is important to us. Please leave one and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Peace be with you.”

  Peace my ass. I hung up and went back into the living room and picked my drink up and lit a cigarette and inhaled. I reveled in the sensation of the smoke filling my lungs. I took another sip of scotch.

  The Center for Enlightened Self-Awareness? Okay. I didn’t know what game Pat Humphrey was playing with me, but I sure as hell was going to find out.

  Now I had two reasons to locate her. Rose Taylor’s and mine.

  Murphy. Murphy. Murphy. Jeez. I rolled the glass on my forehead. He was dead and buried. Gone. But he kept on coming back and messing up my life, making me feel like shit. Just like when he was alive.

  I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew, someone was shaking me. I looked up. Manuel was standing over me on the sofa.

  “You okay?”

  I rubbed my eyes. “How did you get in here?” Then I remembered he had a key to my house. “What time is it, anyway?”

  “Eight-thirty.”

  I sat up and buried my head in my hands. I had an awful taste in my mouth, a crick in my neck from sleeping the wrong way, and my jaw hurt worse than it had when I went to sleep, if that was possible.

  “You look like shit.”

  “Thank you, Manuel, for your support. What do you want?”

  “Bethany is passed out in the kitchen.”

  I brought my head up. “My kitchen?”

  “No. The one down at the Holiday Inn.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oh, yes, I do.”

  “Fine. T and I caught up with her at a rave going on over on the West Side. She was lookin’ for E, and I told her I could get her some.”

  “And she went with you just like that?”

  “She was wasted.”

  “How wasted?”

  “Wasted enough so that I had to stop the car so she could puke.” Manuel made a face. “That was pretty gross.”

  “And she thinks I’m a dealer?”

  “Well, she doesn’t think you’re an English teacher.” He laughed. “Boy, is she going to be in for a surprise. I took her in the house through your side door. By the time I got back from takin’ a piss, she was out cold.”

  I levered myself up and walked into the kitchen. As Manuel had said, Bethany was indeed slumped at the kitchen table, her head on her arms, sleeping. Her mouth was slightly open. Her hair looked like a rat’s nest. Her eye makeup was smeared over her cheeks. Her complexion was white.

  “She looks almost as bad as I do,” I observed. When Manuel didn’t say anything, I added, “You’re supposed to say, ‘You look better.’ ”

  “Okay. You look better.”

  “But she’s okay? We don’t have to call the hospital or anything?”

  “She’s fine. She just needs some sleep.”

  “Watch her,” I said to Manuel.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To phone her parents.”

  “Thank God,” Bethany’s mother sobbed when I told her. “Thank God my baby’s coming home.” Then, before she could say anything else, her husband came on the line.

  “It’s all right, Millie,” Arthur Peterson said. “I’ll handle it.”

  When I walked back into the kitchen, I saw that Manuel had opened the refrigerator and was staring inside it.

  “Her dad will be here in a half hour.”

  He turned. “I did good, hunh?”

  “You did real good.”

  He preened. “That’s why I’m the man.” Then he went back to staring inside the refrigerator. I had to admit it wasn’t an inspiring sight. He frowned. “How come you never have anything to eat in here?”

  I reached for Bethany’s bag and unzipped it. “Because I’m a single woman and single women don’t have food.”

  “My half sister does,” Manuel said, sniffing the milk and recoiling from the smell. “This is disgusting.”

  “Then throw it out,” I told him as I dumped the contents of Bethany’s bag onto the kitchen counter and began pawing through it. I wasn’t worried about Bethany waking up. She hadn’t even twitched during Manuel’s and my conversation.

  I found a couple of pairs of underpants, bubblegum, three packages of ribbed condoms, a Snickers bar, lots of loose change, and a picture of herself when she was little, with her mom and dad, in front of their house.

  “Anything interesting?” Manuel asked, coming up behind me. He picked up the matchbox model of a Porsche and put it down. “Why would she be carrying this around?”

  “I don’t have a clue.” I opened Bethany’s address book and scanned the pages.

  I found Karim’s and Michelle’s phone numbers, numbers for the rest of her friends, numbers for clubs, and the number for Debbie Wright. She’d written “beeper under the number in pencil, and after that she’d written the letter e in parenthesis. Could it be E for ecstasy? Let’s guess. Well, one thing was for sure, I thought as I scribbled the number down on a spare piece of paper before I put everything back in Bethany’s bag. Louis’s girlfriend certainly got around.

  Bethany was still sleeping when her dad pulled into my driveway twenty minutes later. She was still sleeping when he rang the bell and strode through my house. Arthur Peterson didn’t say anything when he saw his daughter. He didn’t say anything when I told him about how Bethany had gotten here. The area around his eyes got tighter and tighter while I talked. His anger was like lava, flowing into every corner of the room.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked as he approached his daughter.

  “Do?” He rubbed the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “Do? The only thi
ng I can do. Send her away.”

  Manuel moved in front of him and stuck out his chin. “What do you mean, send her away? I thought you were taking her home?”

  “Who is this?” Peterson demanded of me, noticing Manuel for the first time.

  “This is the person who found your daughter.”

  “Thank you,” Peterson said abruptly, turning away from him and directing his comments to me. “But I have to do what I consider best for everyone. I can’t continue to have this type of disruption in my life. Neither can my wife. One of my colleagues suggested a place down in Florida that deals with children like Bethany. My wife doesn’t want me to, but obviously staying at home isn’t the answer for my daughter anymore. Sometimes we must follow our minds, not our hearts.”

  “That’s whacked,” Manuel said.

  Peterson ignored him, reached over, put a hand on Bethany’s shoulder, and shook her. “Okay, Bethany. Let’s go.”

  When Bethany opened her eyes and saw her father standing over her, defeat settled over her face. I’d been ready for her to fight or run. But she’d come to the end of her road. At fifteen you don’t have that many you can go down.

  “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Peterson said as his daughter burst into tears. “Come on. Your mother’s waiting.”

  She walked slump-shouldered out of the house, her father following a couple of inches behind her.

  “What an asshole,” Manuel commented as we watched father and daughter walk to their car.

  “He’s upset.”

  “No wonder she doesn’t want to be home.”

  Peterson was saying something to Bethany that was making her cry even harder. She got in, and he slammed the door after her.