“How?”
A sound came from the car, maybe a fingernail tapping on the windshield. Ines turned. One of the girls mouthed something to her.
“How?” Nell said, a little louder. She almost added Lives may be at stake, a completely unwarranted and over-the-top notion that came out of nowhere.
Ines sighed. “Not cheerful anymore. Staying in her room. Falling behind. You know.”
“And what did she tell you?”
“Nothing. She wouldn’t talk about it. Then she started hanging with another crowd, ended up kind of living off-campus.”
“With who?”
“Guys from this other crowd.”
“Students?”
“One of them,” Ines said. “I think.”
“How old were these people?”
Ines shrugged, wouldn’t meet her eye. “The next thing I knew she’d gone home. That’s all I know.” Ines looked miserable.
Nell put her hand on Ines’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she said.
“Please don’t tell her I told you all this.”
“I can’t promise that,” Nell said. “But now I can help her. That makes you a real friend.”
Ines wasn’t buying it. She said good-bye, and thirty seconds after that, the girls’ car was squealing around the corner at the bottom of the hill and vanishing from sight.
Nell called Norah. Voice mail. Joe Don. Same thing. She drove over to Joe Don’s barn. No answer to her knock, and the Miata wasn’t there. She went to Yeller’s Autobody. Joe Don’s day off, said the woman at the desk. Prob’ly gone fishin’, said someone else. Nell got back in her car and headed for New Orleans.
I’m sure they like you, Johnny had said about his parents. They just take some time to get to know. But there hadn’t been time, and she’d never had the chance to see whether Johnny was right: that the faint disapproval she’d felt coming from them was just her imagination misleading her, misinterpreting the normal feelings of two adoring parents for an only child. There’d been almost no contact after Johnny’s funeral—one brief and strained visit to New Orleans with baby Norah, a note to Mr. Blanton after Mrs. Blanton died, a formal reply, not much else. And then, after her session with Professor Urbana, she’d caught that glimpse of him in his garden, an old man now.
Nell got off the freeway, drove down Carrollton, turned on to St. Charles and parked in front of the Blanton mansion. She walked up to the wrought-iron fence, found the gate locked, pressed the buzzer. No response. She was about to press it again when Mr. Blanton backed out from behind a rosebush, shears in hand. He wore a straw hat, seersucker pants, a white shirt, suspenders; was muttering under his breath; didn’t see her.
His name was Paul, but even when he’d been her prospective father-in-law, she hadn’t felt comfortable calling him by it, and now it was impossible. “Mr. Blanton?”
He turned. He’d never looked much like Johnny, and now the resemblance was even less, his cheeks thinned out, his nose beakier, the downward grooves in his face dug deeper. “Yes?” he said, squinting at her.
“It’s me, Nell.”
He went still for a moment, sunlight gleaming on the shears. “What do you want?” he said.
“To talk to you.”
“I’m busy.”
“It won’t take long,” Nell said. “And it’s important.”
“To whom?”
His tone ruled out almost every possibility. Nell tried the only one with any chance at all. “Your granddaughter.”
“How is it important to her?” he said.
“Norah’s in a bad way,” Nell said. “She needs help.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“If there’s fault, we can deal with that later. She needs help now.”
“There’s nothing I can do.”
“How do you know until you’ve heard what I have to say?” Nell said.
He came forward; he was shaking, and his voice shook, too. “You’ve got nerve. Shutting me out of her life all these years and now you come crawling.”
“You shut yourself out.”
His voice rose. He stood within a foot or two of her, facing her through the bars. His breath was awful; decayed and alcoholic. “Why would I do a damn-fool thing like that?”
“Because you never liked me.” How obvious that suddenly seemed, how stupid her long-ago rationalizations, how uneasy—in retrospect—Johnny had been about her and his parents. “You could have gotten in touch anytime.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Blanton said. “We never liked you. He was a prince, that boy. Why you? Why on earth? He could have won the Nobel Prize.” Spittle was flying now; she felt it on her face. “And now sins come home to roost, as I told her.”
“You told Norah that?”
He jabbed his finger through the bars. “The murder was a setup. Don’t know about the exact mechanics, don’t care, but it didn’t take me long to sniff out the basic truth, what with how quick you were to jump into that cop’s bed. Much more your level, of course, made perfect sense.”
Nell backed away. “You told her that, too?”
“And the reporter. I’ll tell the world. I’m sick of the stink, sick to death.”
“What reporter?”
“Goddamn thief from that rag of yours.”
Was he insane? She felt herself hardening inside, tried to hurt him with her gaze. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sweet-talking whore, she was. I let her look through Johnny’s papers, the pathetic little I have, thanks to you—where’s his computer? You squirreled that away, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t squirrel anything away.” His computer? Nell tried to remember. Hadn’t they shared one, an old IBM desktop?
“Liar. You’re a liar just like her. She sent me out of the room on some pretext, and after she left, his address book was missing.”
His address book? Nell tried to control her anger—fury, even, at this old man for the trouble he’d stirred up. “Why would she want that?”
“Because she couldn’t have it—why does anyone want anything? I told her the rules—no taking, no copying—but we all know what happens to rules nowadays.”
Johnny’s address book: Nell remembered it, leather-bound with University of Texas in gold. “Johnny’s papers, whatever else you have—I want to see them.”
“Never.”
“It’s important,” Nell said. “Norah’s at risk. She’s your flesh and blood.”
“Polluted by you.” He raised the shears, brandished them. A passing car slowed to a crawl.
Nell got back on the freeway, doing ninety. She called Lee Ann, got a message that her voice mail was full. She called the Guardian and was told Lee Ann was on assignment. She tried Norah, Joe Don and finally her own home phone, where her own recorded voice invited her to leave a message.
Pirate sat in his room, waiting. He had the digital recorder out on the desk, all set for Lee Ann’s arrival. Last night, when he’d woken her, she’d said she’d be over in the morning. Morning came and went. Maybe she’d said early afternoon. That came and went, too. He called her, got sent to that voice-mail thing. “Hey. Was it morning or afternoon?” A few minutes later, he realized he might not have waited for the beep—Pirate hadn’t done much phoning at Central State, was still getting used to all the changes. He called again. “Customer mailbox is full.” So therefore? “Still here,” he said, just in case there was a tiny bit of room for a two-word message.
After a few more hours, Pirate was restless and hungry, and a little pissed off at Lee Ann. He played back what was on the digital recorder. Real nice. Lee Ann was going to like it, like it fine. She’d sounded excited in the night. So where was she? Then he got to thinking maybe she hadn’t been alone. That disturbed him for some reason, even though she wasn’t particularly good-looking. After a while, he figured out the reason: they were partners; he didn’t want anyone messing up the partnership. Not an unknown anyone.
Pirate got more and more restless. He tri
ed reading the Bible, but the words got blurry, like on the little Kahlúa bottles. He opened the phone book, leafed through the Bs. Would a reporter be listed? Pirate had no idea, but there she was: Bonner, L.A., 207 Beauregard Street. Pirate knew Beauregard Street, on the edge of Lower Town, not far away. He slipped the recorder in his pocket, started out; remembering at the last second the promise he’d made to himself, the promise not to leave his room—his suite—without the tiny weapon. Pirate went into the bedroom, raised the mattress, kept his promise.
CHAPTER 29
Beauregard Street had changed, or else Pirate was remembering wrong. What he remembered were crumbling old warehouses, bums on the street, flies buzzing around, the slow, fat kind of flies, easy to kill. What he saw were warehouses all sandblasted like they were built yesterday, windows shiny, trim freshly painted, no bums, no flies, prosperity on the way. Across the street from 207, workers were hoisting a sign: CAFÉ HURRICANO. And in a lower window of 207 itself, Pirate read: BEAUREGARD LOFTS—LUXURY CONDO AND APARTMENT LIVING—CONTACT BASTIEN RESIDENTIAL REALTY.
Pirate walked up to the door at 207, a cool-looking door, blue and silver—he could afford to live here!—and tried the handle. Locked.
He checked for buzzers and found none. “Hey, Lee Ann.” He raised his fist to bang on the door, but at that moment heard footsteps descending stairs inside—heavy footsteps, not Lee Ann’s. He backed away, into the street, just letting his instincts take over. His instincts were good: he realized that now, maybe a little late in life. The door opened and a man came out, wearing white overalls and carrying paint cans. He left one of them against the door to keep it from closing and went to a van parked a few spaces away. Pirate walked into 207.
A small foyer: Pirate glanced around, took in a Wet Paint sign, an inner door, this one propped open with a paint roller, leading to stairs, and four buzzers on the wall. The spaces beside the first three were blank; number four read: Bonner. No point pressing the buzzer, not with the door already open. Pirate went on up. He felt good. Why not? He had his instincts, and then there was this partnership: his very first partnership, solid and real. There was a signed contract! And what he had on the digital recorder, his contribution—it meant he was holding up his end, no question. Why couldn’t Only a Test turn into one of those books that hit it big, maybe became a movie? Pirate tried to think of the right movie star to play himself, but he didn’t know much about movie stars. Maybe Lee Ann would. That was what partners were for, to pick up the slack. But how about the Scottish guy with the blue face, who’d fought the English? Maybe him.
The stairs were covered with a paint-spattered drop cloth. Pirate climbed to the first landing. The door to number two was closed; door number one hung open, revealing a glimpse of stepladders, light fixtures lying on the floor, a sawhorse. He kept going. On the second landing, both doors were closed. Pirate knocked on number four.
No answer.
“Lee Ann? You there?”
Nothing. He knocked again, harder. “Lee Ann?” Maybe she wasn’t home. Either that, or she was avoiding him. That possibility pissed him off. He knocked one last time, hardest of all, more like pounding. “Hey! Lee Ann!” He listened for some sound inside, a quiet footstep, a door softly closing, and heard nothing. “Okay. Guess you’re not home.” Pirate took a few loud steps toward the stairs, a few silent ones back. He put his ear to the door. A few seconds passed. Then—oh, yes, his hearing, superhuman—he heard a faint moan, very soft, very light.
Bad news. Lee Ann was home, all right, avoiding him and not alone. Home with some loverboy. She wasn’t beautiful, nothing like Norah, with that soft soft skin, but they were partners. They had a signed contract. He was getting sick of this. Who did she think she was dealing with? He was a man of means, not some pushover. Pirate leaned back, lowered his shoulder, lunged at the door. A brand-new, well-made door: it barely splintered on the first try, but the third took him inside Lee Ann’s apartment or condo or whatever it was, bursting his way through and feeling strong and angry.
Pirate looked around. Lee Ann’s place was some kind of open design, with high ceilings, walls that were part wood and part concrete, hardwood floors, dark stone countertops. Without taking another step, he could see just about everything: kitchen, office, living room, all unoccupied. He went down a little hall, past a washer and dryer, into an empty bathroom. That left the bedroom, which had to be through the closed door on the far side of the open bar.
Pirate went to the bedroom door, put his ear to this one, too. This time he heard nothing. He tried the knob. It turned; but before going in, he knocked. He had manners.
Pirate entered Lee Ann’s bedroom. It was a big room with paintings on the walls, a soft rug, a king-size bed. The bed was unmade, no one in it. There was a second bathroom off the bedroom. He poked his head in: a big bathroom with lots of mirrors, a huge bathtub, a stall shower. Pirate went in, opened the shower door: lots of soaps and shampoos, but no Lee Ann. He returned to the bedroom, knelt, peered under the bed: nothing, not even dustballs. She wasn’t home.
And therefore? Therefore there’d been no moan, no loverboy, no attempt to avoid him. He’d misjudged her, doubted the partnership for no reason. Pirate didn’t feel good about that. All she wanted was to tell his story. She’d always been straight up with him. He owed her for that, although what, exactly, he didn’t know.
He sat down at the kitchen table. On the table lay a fruit bowl with some nice peaches in it, a half-full mug of coffee and an address book with University of Texas in gold on the front. Was his name in it? Pirate leafed through, found day-by-day appointment pages in the front and names and addresses in the back; lots of names, but not his. He laid the address book aside, stuck his finger in the coffee: cold. He realized he was thirsty and drank it all down.
Pirate went to the desk, found a sheet of paper, wrote a note. Hey. Heres the recording thing. Digital. Check out this inturvue with the cheif!! Sory about your door. Mistake. I’ll pay. A. DuPree. He took the recorder from his pocket and laid it on the note. Then he peeled $320 off the roll he’d started carrying in his pocket—an amount that came to him out of the blue—and set it on the note, beside the recorder. He circled I’ll pay and drew an arrow from there to the money.
Now what? Kahlúa sounded good. Did Lee Ann have any? Pirate went to the bar, opened the cupboard: two bottles of white wine, a bottle of vodka. Vodka and wine—booze, no question about it. Was it true what they said about vodka, that it had no smell? Pirate couldn’t remember. He twisted off the cap—not to drink, only for a smell test—and had his nose to the opening, taking a deep, scientific sniff, when he heard a moan.
Pirate froze. Froze was the word, all right: he felt a strange iciness on the back of his neck, something brand-new. A moan, without a doubt, but how could that be? He was alone inside Lee Ann’s place.
“Lee Ann?” he said, but very softly, too soft for anyone to hear.
Pirate put down the vodka bottle, moved toward the bedroom, all movements slow and silent. He looked in the bedroom, saw nothing he hadn’t seen the first time. Was it possible she lay under the rumpled covers on the unmade bed? No; but he pulled them back anyway, revealing a red plastic hair clip, nothing more. He picked up the hair clip, sniffed it, too, smelled something nice. At that moment, he got the squinting feeling in his non-eye, as though it was getting ready to see through the surface of something. Why wouldn’t it? That was where God kept his secret power.
But what surface was he supposed to see through, what insight was waiting to be discovered? Pirate glanced around the room and noticed what he’d missed before, a tiny glint on the dark rug. He went over, bent down, and picked up a pair of glasses: those strange glasses Lee Ann had, the glasses that made her look so smart and at the same time uglier than in real life. They were twisted out of shape, maybe like she’d stepped on them. Pirate could picture that happening. Lee Ann probably couldn’t see well without the glasses, so after she dropped them it would be easy to—
Another moan.
Unmistakable. A woman’s moan, and it came from the closet—at least, Pirate had assumed it was a closet, with one of those wood-slatted doors, so air could get in. Was she in there with loverboy, after all? Should have checked it the first time. Pirate went over and checked it now, flinging the door open.
This was a closet? It was like another room, extending way back, lined with lots of clothes hanging on both sides. The only light came from a ceiling window. It fell on rows and rows of gleaming shoes, a distracting sight that kept Pirate from noticing what lay at the rear of the closet.
Lee Ann, on her back. She had her skirt hiked way up and her legs spread, but there was no loverboy. Great legs, it turned out, and she wore a tiny black thong, also a surprise. A surprise and another distraction. Pirate didn’t notice what had happened to her face until he’d taken another step or two.
“Oh.”
Bad things. Her face was not the same, looked like one of those modern artists had got hold of it, all bashed in here and bulging there. Her spiky hair was bloody and her eyes were closed, one of them closed like a normal eye, but the other eye, the left, was ruined, a puffball leaking a jellylike glob between the lashes. Pirate got the squinting feeling in his non-eye. An insight was coming after all. His partner: someone had killed her, bashed in her head. But Pirate was expecting more of an insight than that. He was still waiting for its arrival when she moaned.
Pirate jumped back. “Lee Ann?” He forced himself to go closer, bend over her. “Lee Ann?”
Nothing.
He bent a little more, reached down to take her wrist, feel for a pulse, and at that moment noticed a gun on the floor, a foot or so from her hand: a little revolver with a grip that looked like pink pearl. Had she been shot, too? He didn’t see any bullet-wound signs. Maybe if he rolled her over and—but Pirate didn’t want to do that. In fact, all he wanted was to get the hell—
Lee Ann’s good eye opened. It shifted, found him. Her lips moved, very slightly. She said something, all gurgly. He didn’t catch it.
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