Peggy Sue Got Murdered

by Tess Gerritsen

  After a silence, Adam said, "It does appear that way."

  Hugging her arms to her chest, M. J. began to move slowly around the room, thinking as she paced. The picture of calmness, thought Adam. Except for her hands; he could see they were trembling. She stopped by the window and gazed out at the sunwashed lawn and trees.

  "Believe me, M. J.," said Beamis. "Bellemeade Precinct's got all cylinders going on this. I've spoken with the detectives. They're checking all the possibilities-"

  "Are they really?" she asked softly.

  "There are a lot of angles to consider. Maybe it's someone you gave expert testimony against in court. Or an ex-boyfriend. Hell, they're even questioning Ed."

  "Ed?" She laughed, a wild, desperate sound. "Ed can't even program a VCR. Much less wire a bomb."

  "Okay, so it's probably not Ed. Not him personally, anyway. But he has been questioned."

  She turned to look at Beamis. "Then everyone agrees. It's a bona fide murder attempt."

  "No doubt about it. It only takes one look at your house. Or what used to be your house."

  She looked out again, at the trees. "It's because of them."

  "Who?"

  "Nicos Biagi. Jane Doe. It's because of what's happening in the Projects."

  "You could have other enemies," said Beamis. "And you lost your purse, remember? One of those punks could've gotten into your house-"

  "And set a sixty-second delay detonator?" She shook her head. "I suppose they picked up a case of TNT at the corner grocery store. Lou, they were kids. I grew up with kids just like them! They wouldn't fuss with flash compounds or blasting caps. And what's their motive?"

  "I don't know." Beamis sighed in exasperation. "They did rough you up-"

  "But they didn't kill us! They had the chance, but they didn't." She turned to Adam, her eyes alight with green fire.

  God, she was fearless, he thought. Magnificent.

  "Well, say something, Adam!" she snapped.

  He looked at Beamis. "I have to agree with her. She's right, Lieutenant. Those kids wouldn't know about fuse igniters. This bomb sounds like a sophisticated device. Built by someone who knew what he was doing."

  "A professional," said Shradick.

  The word was enough to make M. J. blanch. Adam saw her chin jerk up, saw the tightening of her lips. She was frightened, all right. She should be. In silence she moved to the table and sat down across from him. The bathrobe gapped open a little; only then did he realize she was naked beneath that terrycloth. How defenseless she looked, he thought. Stripped of everything. Even her clothes.

  And at that moment, defenseless was exactly how M. J. felt.

  She sat hugging the robe to her breasts, her gaze fixed on the tabletop. She heard Beamis and Shradick rise to leave; dimly she registered their goodbyes, their departing footsteps. Then there came the thud of the front door closing behind them. Closed doors. That's what she saw when she tried to look into the future. Closed doors, hidden dangers.

  Once, life had seemed comfortably predictable. Drive to work every morning, drive home every night. A vacation twice a year, a date once in a blue moon. A steady move up the ranks until she'd assume Davis Wheelock's title of Chief ME. A sure thing, he'd told her once.

  Now she was reminded that there were no sure things. Not her future. Not even her life.

  "You're not alone, M. J.," said Adam.

  She looked up and met his gaze across the tabletop.

  "Anything you need," he said. "Anything at all-"

  "Thanks," she said with a smile. "But I'm not big on accepting charity."

  "That's not what I meant. I don't think of you as some charity case."

  "But that's exactly what I am at the moment." She rose and began to pace. "Some sort of-of homeless person! Camping out in your guest bedroom."

  To her surprise, he suddenly laughed. "To be perfectly honest," he admitted, "you do look a trifle threadbare this morning. Where did you find that awful bathrobe, by the way?"

  She glanced down at the frayed terrycloth and suddenly she had to laugh as well. "Your linen closet. I had to wear something, and I figured it was either this or a towel. Where are my clothes, by the way?"

  "A lost cause. Thomas had to throw them out."

  "He threw out my clothes?"

  "Some new things are being delivered."

  "In the meantime, I walk around like this?"

  "Oh, I don't mind, really. A towel would be fine, too."

  She caught his amused downward glance, and realized the robe had sagged open again. Irritably she yanked the edges back together. "Is this how you treat all your lady houseguests? Toss out their clothes and expect them to make do?"

  "No, you're privileged. The others only get towels. Hand towels."

  Now he had her laughing again. She sat down and noticed the stack of papers on the table. "What's all this?"

  "Lieutenant Beamis dropped it off. They're police files. Or, rather, photocopies of files."

  "He gave them to you? That's highly irregular."

  "It's also just between us. He and I have what you might call a mutual back-scratching arrangement."

  "Oh. So what's in the files?"

  Adam picked up the top folder. "I have here Nicos Biagi. And Xenia Vargas. And Jane Doe." He looked up at her, almost apologetically. "I'll be honest with you, M. J. I didn't ask for these files on your behalf, but on mine. For Cygnus. I can't argue away the facts. That is my drug out there, killing people. I want to know how they got it."

  She focused on the top file. "Let's see what's in there."

  He opened Nicos Biagi's folder. "Names and addresses. His family might know where he bought the drug."

  "They won't talk. Even Beamis couldn't get it out of them."

  "Does that surprise you? They probably smelled cop a mile away. So I'm going to ask them."

  "I wonder what odor they'll pin on you."

  "The smell of fresh greenbacks? It's very persuasive."

  "Adam, you can't walk into the Projects with a bulging wallet!"

  "Can you think of a better incentive?"

  "You go in there without protection, and they'll have you for an appetizer."

  "Then how am I supposed to reach these-people?" he asked, pointing to the folders. "I went through a half-dozen private detectives, trying to trace Maeve. So I don't have a lot of confidence in so-called professionals. I know that some friend of Nicos, or of Xenia Vargas, has to know the answers. You're the one who said it, M. J. If we can't pinpoint how the drug's getting out of Cygnus, perhaps we can figure out whom it's going to. And how he's getting it."

  She looked at him in wonder. She used to think he was just a pretty boy in cashmere. He always managed to surprise her.

  "Are you sure you really want to find out?" she asked. "What if the answer turns out to be a nasty surprise?"

  "You're referring to Maeve?"

  "Her name did cross my mind."

  He sighed. "It's something I'll… have to face."

  "That's why you're doing this yourself, isn't it? Why you don't just hire a PI to do the legwork. You're afraid of what some outsider will find out about your daughter."

  He looked away. "You know, I used to think I could protect her. Pull her off the streets and put her in some sort of program. But it's not going to happen. She refuses to be helped. And in the meantime, people are dying, and I don't know if she's the one responsible…"

  "You can't protect her, Adam. One of these days, she'll have to face the music."

  "Don't you think I know that?" He shook his head in frustration. "All these years, that's exactly what I've been doing! Protecting her, bailing her out. Paying her bills when she bounced her checks. Booking her appointments with therapists. I kept thinking, if she just had enough attention, if I could just do the right thing-whatever that was-that somehow she'd pull out of it. She wouldn't end up like Georgina."

  Georgina . She thought of the name she'd seen, inscribed on the plaque in Hancock General. The Georg
ina Quantrell Wing.

  She asked, gently, "How did your wife die?"

  He was silent for so long, she thought perhaps he hadn't heard the question. "She died of a lot of things," he said at last. "The official diagnosis was liver cirrhosis. But the illness really went back, to her childhood. A father addicted to martinis and work. A mother addicted to pills and cigarettes. Georgina looked for comfort wherever she could find it. By the time we met, she'd already been through two husbands and Lord knows how many bottles of gin. I was twenty-four at the time. All I saw was this-this absolutely stunning woman with an adorable daughter. Georgina was adept at covering up. If she had to, she could go off the bottle for weeks at a time, and that's what she did before the wedding. But after we got back from the honeymoon, I noticed she was having a few too many highballs, a few too many glasses of wine. Then Thomas found the stash of bottles in the closet. And that's when I realized how far it had gone…" He shook his head and sighed.

  "Fourteen years later, she was dead. And I'm still trying to deal with the aftermath. Namely, Maeve."

  "You stayed married to her through all that?"

  "I felt I didn't have a choice. But then, neither did she. Self-destruction was in her genes, and she didn't have the will to fight. She just wasn't strong enough." He paused, and added quietly, "Unlike you."

  He looked at her then, and she found her gaze trapped in the blue-gray spell of his eyes. They reached out to each other across the table and their fingers touched, twined together. That joining of warmth was enough to make her heart sing. They held on, even through the ringing of the doorbell and the sound of Thomas's footsteps crossing the foyer to answer it.

  Only the polite clearing of a throat made them finally look up. Thomas was standing in the doorway. "Mr. Q.?" he said. "The wardrobe consultant is here from Neiman-Marcus. I thought perhaps Dr. Novak would like to look over the selections."

  "Wardrobe consultant?" said M. J. in surprise. "But all I really need right now is a pair of jeans and a change of underwear."

  "You needn't take the consultant's advice," said Thomas. "Although…" He glanced at her bathrobe. "I'm certain she'll have a number of, er, helpful suggestions."

  M. J. laughed and pushed back from the table. "Bring her on, then. I guess I need to wear something."

  "When you've made your selections, Dr. Novak," said Thomas, "just leave the bathrobe with me. I'll see that it's properly taken care of."

  "Whatever you say," said M. J.

  "Very good," said Thomas and he turned to leave. As he walked out of the room, he muttered with undisguised glee, "Because I'm going to burn it."

  Protection was what they needed in South Lexington. And when it came to hostile territory, M. J. decided, the best to be had was from the natives. So it was to Papa Earl's apartment they went first, to have a talk with his grandson, Anthony. The boy might not hold any real power in the Projects, but he'd know how to reach those who did.

  They found the boy slouched in his undershirt, watching Days of Our Lives in the living room.

  "Anthony," said Papa Earl. "Mariana wants to talk to you."

  Anthony raised the remote control and changed the channel to Jeopardy.

  "You listening, boy?" barked Papa Earl.

  "What?"

  "Mariana and her friend, they come to see you."

  M. J. moved in front of the TV, deliberately blocking Anthony's view. He looked up at her with sullen dark eyes. It was heartbreaking to see how little was left of the child she used to baby-sit. In his place was a tinder-box of rage.

  "We want to ask the big man a favor," said M. J.

  "What big man you talking about?"

  "We're willing to pay up front. Safe passage, that's all we ask. And maybe a friend or two to watch our backs. No cops involved, we swear it."

  "What you want safe passage for?"

  "Just to talk to some people. About Nicos and Xenia." She paused and added, "And you can tell Maeve we're not after her."

  Anthony twitched and looked away. So he was the one who had warned her, she decided.

  Anthony was trying in vain to look past her, at the TV. "How much?" he asked.

  "A hundred."

  "And how much does the big man get?"

  The kid was sharp. "Another hundred."

  Anthony thought about it a moment. Then he said, "Move outta the way." M. J. stepped aside. He pointed the remote control and switched off the TV. "Wait here," he said. He stood up and walked out of the apartment.

  "What do you think?" asked Adam.

  "He's either going to come back with our bodyguards," said M. J., "or a hit squad."

  "Don't know what I'm gonna do 'bout that boy," said Papa Earl. "I just don't know."

  Ten minutes passed. They all sat in the kitchen, where Bella banged pots and pans on the stove. The smell of old cooking grease, of frying sausages and simmering pinto beans, was almost enough to drive them out. Those smells brought back too many memories for M. J., of stifling summer evenings when the smells from her mother's stove would kill whatever appetite she had, when the heat from the kitchen seemed to suck the air out of every room. Now, as she watched young Bella, she saw the ghost of her own mother, squinting into the haze of hot oil.

  A door banged shut. Adam and M. J. turned to see Anthony come into the kitchen. With him were two other boys, both about sixteen, both with the cold, flat expressions of foot soldiers.

  "You got it," said Anthony. "Just this one day. You want to come back again, you pay again. They'll watch your backs." He collected his two hundred dollars from Adam. "So where do you want to go first?"

  "The Biagi flat," said M. J.

  Anthony looked at the boys. "Okay. Take 'em there."

  10

  Nicos was a good boy, insisted Mr. and Mrs. Biagi. It seemed to be a universal mantra of parents in South Lexington-he was a good boy. A kid could pick up a gun and commit mass murder, and that refrain would still pop out of his parents' mouths.

  The Biagis had no idea what Nicos had been doing with that needle and tourniquet. He had not been a drug addict. He had been a student at Louis French Junior College and had worked nights as a stockboy in the Big E supermarket in Bellemeade. He had bought a new car, paid for his own clothes.

  And his own drugs , M. J. thought.

  After an hour, she and Adam gave up trying to break through that wall of parental denial. Yes, Nicos must truly have been a saint, they agreed, and left the apartment.

  Their two bodyguards were lolling on the front steps, watching a little girl skip rope.

  "… Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,

  "Feel the rhythm of the heart, ding dong,

  "Feel the rhythm of the heart…"

  As M. J. and Adam came outside, the girl stopped her chant and looked up at them.

  "We're through here," said M. J. "Didn't learn a damn thing."

  The two boys glanced at each other with a wry look of We coulda told you that.

  The girl was still staring at them.

  "Okay, let's try Xenia Vargas," said Adam. "Do you know where she lived?"

  "Two blocks over," piped up the girl with the jump rope. "But she's dead."

  For the first time, M. J. focused on the child. She was about eight years old, small and wiry, with a tangled bird's nest of hair. Her smock dress had been patched so many times it was hard to make out the pattern of the original fabric.

  "Get outta here, Celeste," said one of the boys. "Your mama's callin' you."

  "I don't hear nothing."

  "Well, she's callin'."

  "Can't be. She's workin' till seven. So there."

  M. J. crouched down beside the girl. "Did you know Xenia?" she asked.

  The girl swiped at her runny nose and looked at her. "Sure. I seen her around all the time."

  "Where?"

  "All over. She'd hang out at the Laundromat."

  "Anyone else hang out with her?"

  "Sometimes. The boys, they liked talkin' to Xenia."<
br />
  "Ain't all they liked doin' to Xenia," one of the bodyguards said with a snicker.

  Celeste fixed him with a dirty look. "Yeah, I seen those boys 'round your sister too, Leland."

  Leland's snicker died. He gave Celeste an equally dirty look. The girl smiled back.

  "She ever hang out with Nicos Biagi?" asked Adam.

  "Sometimes."

  "What about this lady?" M. J. asked. She took out the morgue photo of Jane Doe. For a second, she hesitated to show it to the child, then decided she had to.

  Celested glanced at the picture with a clinical eye. "Dead, huh?" M. J. nodded. "Yeah," said Celeste. "I don't know her name, 'xactly, but I seen her with Xenia. She's not a regular."

  "A regular?" inquired Adam.

  "She doesn't live here. She just visits."

  "Oh. A tourist."

  "Yeah, like you."

  "Celeste," said Leland. "Scram."

  The girl didn't move.

  They started up the street. A block away, M. J. glanced back and saw the little figure still watching them, the jump rope trailing from her hand.

  "She's all by herself," said M. J. "Doesn't anyone look after her?"

  "Everyone here knows her," said Leland. "Hell, they can't get rid of the brat."

  Celeste was skipping rope again, her quick steps bringing her along the sidewalk in undisguised pursuit.

  They ignored her and walked two blocks to Building Three. Leland directed them to the sixth floor. M. J. knocked at the door.

  A woman answered-a girl, really-with makeup thick as putty and plucked eyebrows reduced to two unevenly drawn black slashes. Heavy earrings jangled as she looked first at M. J., then-much longer-at Adam. "Yeah?"

  "I'm from the medical examiner's office," explained M. J. "We think your roommate-"

  "I'm not talkin' to no one from the Health Department."

  "I'm not from the Health Department. I'm from-"

  "I went in for my shots. I'm cured, okay? So leave me alone." She started to close the door, but Leland stuck his hand out to block it.

  "They wanna know 'bout Xenia. I brought 'em here."

  "Why?"

  " 'Cause this where she lived."

  "No, dodo. Why they askin'?"

  "She died of a drug OD," said M. J. "Did you know that?"