Mourning Gloria

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Halfway up the hill, I found the bench—a thick wooden slab perched on rock supports, under a large live oak tree—and sat down. There was another bench at right angles to it. A few moments later, Shannon appeared like a silent wraith out of the woods.

  “There’s nobody else around,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve checked.” She sat down, shivering. “It pays to be careful,” she added, and I could hear the apprehension in her voice.

  “Gloria Graham,” I said in a business-like tone. “You said you know her. Right?”

  She gave me a sideways look. “Yes, I knew her back in grade school. High school, too. We grew up in Seguin. You know where that is?”

  I nodded. As it happens, that’s where McQuaid grew up. His parents still live there.

  “Right. Well, it’s not that big of a town. You can’t help knowing the kids you go to school with.” She put her hands on either side of her on the bench, stretching out her bare, tanned legs and crossing her ankles. “You know their families, too. My mom and GiGi’s mom used to see one another all the time.”

  I leaned forward, thinking of the bracelet with its engraved initials. “That’s Gloria’s nickname?”

  “Yeah. When she was a kid, she hated her name. Gloria was too old-fashioned, not sexy enough. So she called herself GiGi. You know, like in that old Leslie Caron movie? Or sometimes she just wrote it G period G period.” With a finger, she traced the letter’s shape in the air. “You know, like with the initials. Either way, it had to have two capital Gs in it.” She gave me a hard, fierce look. “One of anything was never enough for Gloria. She was greedy, pure and simple. She just reached out and took whatever she wanted, didn’t matter who it belonged to.”

  I heard the bitterness and wondered what or who Gloria had taken from Shannon—and when. When they were kids in grade school? High school? More recently? Some people have long memories—and carry long grudges. Sometimes, long grudges end in dark doings. Still, if this girl had anything to do with Gloria’s death, she wouldn’t be sitting here talking to me right now. At least, I didn’t think so.

  “What can you tell me about her?” I asked, resisting the urge to look at my watch.

  Not meeting my eyes, she gave an evasive shrug. “Like, what do you want to know?”

  I was suddenly impatient. I was here because of Jessica, and for all I knew, time might be running out for her. “I want to know why somebody would tie Gloria up, shoot her, and leave her—alive—to burn to death,” I said bluntly. Sorry, Blackie, I thought. I’m giving too much away. But I was being intentionally brutal. I wanted to shock this young woman. I wanted to jar loose whatever information she had.

  “Shoot her . . .” This was clearly news to her. “Burn her to death?” She closed her eyes, sucked in her breath, opened her eyes again. “Oh, God,” she whispered. I could hear the fear trembling in her voice—no dramatics now, nothing contrived. It was real fear. “Is that what happened ?”

  “That’s what happened. Now, what can you tell me?”

  She tried again. “You’re sure it was Gloria and not somebody else?”

  “There’s evidence, but I can’t tell you what it is.” I gave her a straight, hard look. “Why are you so afraid, Shannon? What’s your involvement in this? Do you know who might have killed her?”

  She crossed her arms over her narrow chest, holding herself tightly, as if she might come apart if she didn’t. She didn’t want to answer that question, so she went back to my earlier one. “You wanted to know about Gloria. Well, I can tell you about her.” She paused, thinking where to begin. “She is . . . was a good-time girl, if you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t know, exactly. What’s a good-time girl?”

  She gave me a look that said I was ignorant, or old, or both. “She liked to party, have fun. And she liked to be on top.” She paused, and became more deliberate. “She was a user, in every sense of that word.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. Maybe. I risked another look. “User? As in—”

  “As in using people, using her body, using drugs, using her father, using every opportunity she stumbled over. A manipulator.”

  Her body I got. “Her father?”

  “She made him feel guilty for leaving her mother. He paid off. He was always giving her money.”

  I went for something else. “What kind of drugs?”

  “Whatever she could get.” She looked off to one side. “She didn’t specialize.” She got off the bench, threw up her arms in a dramatic gesture, and began to pace. “Ah, hell. Telling you isn’t gonna change anything.” She was brash and hard, but underneath, she was scared. “I don’t even know who you are.”

  I could see the problem. Shannon wanted to tell what she knew, but she was frightened. Maybe she was afraid that somebody would come after her. Maybe she was afraid of incriminating herself. But whatever it was, I had to have something more to go on. And the only leverage I had was her fear.

  “Sit down,” I growled. When she didn’t, I reached for a voice I don’t use very often these days, but which is still in my repertoire when I need it. My lawyer’s voice, hard, flat, authoritative. “Sit down and listen to me.”

  Startled, she sat.

  I stood, looking down at her. “We’re talking serious stuff here, Shannon. Arson-homicide in the case of Gloria Graham. A possible kidnapping, maybe worse, with regard to Jessica Nelson. If you know anything—anything at all—about what happened to either of these women, you can be charged as an accessory, before or after the fact.” I paused. “Understand what that means?”

  She whimpered. “I thought you said you weren’t a cop.”

  “I’m not. I’m a lawyer.”

  “What kind of a lawyer?” She sat up straight, eyes opening wide. “Like, do you do crimes?”

  “If you mean, do I handle criminal defense cases, the answer is I used to. Not now.”

  “Criminal defense.” She chewed on that for a moment, then: “Would you . . . would you defend me? If the cops came after me, I mean?”

  “I might recommend someone. If I thought you were shooting straight.”

  She hesitated. “You said ‘accessory.’ What’s that, exactly?”

  I switched into explanation mode. “If you know about a crime before it was committed, you can be charged as an accessory before the fact. If you find out about it after it was committed and help the criminal conceal it, or aid the criminal in escaping, or even simply fail to report what you know, you can be charged as an accessory after the fact.” I paused, giving her time to think about this. “And then there’s obstruction of justice. The police like to use that charge when they think you know something that would help them and you’re refusing to cough it up.”

  “But I . . . I really don’t . . .” She stopped, biting her lip. I could see her measuring whatever she knew against what I had told her.

  I went on, evenly, quietly. “And then there’s the other side of the equation. The danger to you. The physical danger.”

  She hadn’t finished adding and subtracting yet, but this stopped her. “To me?” Her voice trembled, and she tried again. “Danger?”

  “Where’s your head, Shannon? This is a game you’re playing? Like a video game? A reality show? One woman is dead, another missing.” I had no firm evidence connecting Jessica’s disappearance with the death of the girl in the trailer. But the more I learned, the more sure I was that the two were related. Whatever Shannon knew about the murder might help me to locate Jessica. And whatever Shannon knew about the murder could put her in serious jeopardy. She could turn out to be Number Three. At least, that’s what I wanted her to think.

  I went on. “Here’s my advice to you. If you have any information about either of these women, say it out loud and say it now, and I’ll consider how best to help you. Otherwise . . .” I shrugged.

  She took a breath. “Well, I don’t know anything about the reporter. But I can maybe tell you why . . . why Gloria got killed. Would that—would that help?�
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  “Depends.”

  Her mouth tightened. “Well, there’s that trailer, for instance.”

  “What about the trailer?”

  “You know what I was saying about her being a user?” She took a deep breath and launched into it. “Well, she was moving out of her apartment and it was going to be a couple of days before she could get into her new place. She had plenty of money. She could have afforded a motel, or she could have stayed at her mom’s house. But she was putting on some sort of stupid act, the kind of thing she did a lot, whining about being broke and having to sleep in her car.” She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Like somebody who could afford a Mustang had to friggin’ sleep in it? But Larry—Larry Wolff, he’s one of Laughton’s students—felt sorry for her.”

  “That was when he gave her the key? When was that?”

  “A few weeks ago. He said he and his roommate had just moved out of a trailer out on Limekiln Road. They had another week on the rent, and the utilities were still on. There was no reason she couldn’t sleep there for a night or two. He said the place was private, behind a bunch of trees.”

  “Was Gloria involved with Larry Wolff?”

  “Involved? You mean, was she sleeping with him?” She laughed at that, a hard, flat laugh. “Well, maybe not before this happened. But when he gave her the key, he offered to meet her out there that night and make sure everything was okay. She gave him one of those calculating looks of hers, so I figured . . .” She paused. “Well, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe,” I allowed. Yes, if I’d seen that transaction, I probably would’ve guessed that sex was involved.

  Another laugh, harsh, bitter. “That’s the way Gloria was, you know. She used people to get what she wanted. But it wasn’t Larry she was after, if that’s what you’re thinking. She might sleep with him for fun, or to show that she could do it, or just because she felt like it at the moment. But she had bigger fish to fry.”

  “Bigger fish?”

  “Dr. Laughton took his graduate seminar to Oaxaca over the Thanksgiving vacation last year. Gloria went along with us.” She eyed me, as if she thought she was giving me a piece of important information, something that ought to get my attention.

  Oaxaca. Oaxaca. I frowned. The only connection I could make was something about morning glory seeds in an article I had read when I was doing research for the garden club program. The Mazatec shamans in the Oaxaca region of Mexico used morning glory seeds as part of their spiritual ritual—used them for healing, too. I frowned. Morning glory seeds—the same stuff that Lucy LaFarge was processing for the street trade. Lucy LaFarge. Larry Wolff’s roommate.

  “Did Wolff go along on this field trip?”

  She nodded.

  “What was the seminar topic?”

  “It was a directed studies seminar, cross-listed with Ethnobotany, in the Biology Department. Everybody designed a different research project, but all the projects had something to do with the place where we went—this little village in the mountains.”

  “And the projects were . . .”

  She spoke impatiently, as if we had slid away from the point she wanted to make. “Mine was collecting stories from the native people about a psychoactive plant they call Shka Pastora—Salvia divinorum. Larry was doing research on the native corn the local farmers grow—something about genetically modified seed contaminating their seed sources. Matt was studying ololiuqui, a psychoactive used in some of the local Mazatec rituals. Roger was doing flora surveys. We all stayed in one village. Dr. Laughton made the arrangements, even lined up translators to help us out. He takes his seminars to Oaxaca a couple of times a year, so he’s familiar with the area. He did his own graduate work there.”

  Ololiuqui. Morning glory seeds. Lucy LaFarge had gotten morning glory seeds from somebody named Matt.

  “Matt who?”

  “Why do you care about that?” She shook her head impatiently, showing me that we were way off topic now. “It’s not important.”

  “Matt who?” I repeated.

  She rolled her eyes. “Matt Simmons.”

  I processed the information and went on. “Okay, let’s talk about Gloria. What kind of research was she doing?”

  “Gloria?” A sarcastic laugh. But now we were back on topic, as far as Shannon was concerned. “She wasn’t enrolled in the seminar. She was doing research in . . .” She tilted her head, smiling thinly. “Connections, you might say.”

  Connections? I’d come back to that. “If she wasn’t enrolled, how could she go on a university-sponsored field trip to Mexico?”

  “A very good question, especially in this case.” She eyed me again, to see if I had caught that, then went on. “But it happens sometimes, you know, if there’s room in the van, and if the person pays. It helps to keep everybody’s costs down. Split the gas and lodging. So you want the van to be filled. We had six, counting Stu.”

  Stu, not Dr. Laughton. But graduate students often call their professors by their first names, especially when they’re away from the classroom. “Counting Gloria, too?”

  “That’s right. Counting Gloria.” There was that bitter note again. Sour, jealous. She paused. “Aren’t you going to ask why she went?”

  I was feeling a little impatient. All this was about Shannon being jealous of somebody who got to ride along on a field trip? “Okay—why?”

  She took a deep breath, as if she were steeling herself. “Because Stu was the bigger fish.”

  That stopped me. Cold. “Dr. Laughton?”

  “You got it.” She looked directly at me. “It had been going on for a few months, I guess. It was supposed to be a secret, but you know how these things are. Word gets around. People talk.”

  Well, no, I didn’t know, actually. That is, not from my own personal experience. Of course, when I was in law school, the occasional rumor went around that some professor was sleeping with this or that student. Faculty members are no different from anyone else. Attraction happens, even when it’s not in the best interests of the people involved, and there were probably other cases that didn’t call enough attention to themselves to rise to the level of departmental gossip. But that was in the days before universities began formulating regulations prohibiting sexual relations between teacher and student. And there’s been enough open discussion among the faculty to raise awareness of the hazards of affairs like these. A spurned student lover who is inclined toward retribution is doubly dangerous. He or she can spin a broken relationship into a sexual harassment suit in a jiffy, and blackmail is a distinct possibility.

  But Stuart Laughton? I mean, he’s such an ordinary guy. Flirtatious, yes, sometimes outrageously so—although I’d never taken him seriously. But maybe he just wasn’t my type, so I’d been annoyed when he called me sweetie, not attracted to him. Maybe, if I’d been a young student in one of his classes and he came on to me in that way, I might have felt differently.

  And then I remembered that Margie had taken the kids and gone to stay with her mother. Had she done that because her husband was sleeping with a student?

  “Gloria was a user,” Shannon repeated darkly. “The affair was her idea. Stu had something she wanted, and she seduced him to get it. When she had what she wanted, she was finished with him. It was all over by Christmas.”

  By Christmas? But Margie had left Stu just a few weeks ago. So there had to be another reason for her leaving. Another affair, maybe?

  Shannon turned away from my glance, and I wondered if this was the source of her jealousy, if she herself was recently or currently involved with Stuart Laughton and resented Gloria for throwing him over or breaking his heart or whatever. Which didn’t make a lot of sense, I had to admit—but it probably wasn’t important. There were other things I needed to know.

  “You mentioned Gloria’s connections,” I said. “What kind of connections are we talking about?”

  There it was again, that fear, on her face, in her eyes. She hesitated for so long that I thought she had decided to stop t
alking. I glanced pointedly at my watch. “If that’s all you’ve got to tell me—”

  “What kind do you think?” she blurted out. “Dealer connections. Cartel connections. This was Mexico, wasn’t it?”

  I blinked. Cartel? “You’re kidding!”

  She gave me a bleak look. “I wish. Why do you think we’re out here in the woods, where nobody can hear us? This is the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. Gloria’s dead—if that was her in the trailer—and you’re telling me that some newspaper reporter has disappeared, and you think I’m kidding?” She flung out her arms. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you,” she cried dramatically. “You could be one of them. You could be about to kill me!”

  I ignored her histrionics. “How do you know about the cartel connections?”

  She swallowed. “Because Gloria told me. Because I saw the stuff.” She threw me a quickly defensive look. “And don’t go thinking I was involved in what she was doing. I had nothing to do with it. And Stu didn’t either, if that’s what’s on your mind. He doesn’t have a clue.”

  That might be true from one point of view, I thought. But if Shannon had known what was going on, she was involved—or somebody, several somebodies, in fact, might think she was. That’s why she was afraid.

  “Involved in what?” I asked, although I thought I was beginning to understand. “What was it you didn’t have anything to do with?”

  “Smuggling. Like, you know.” She waved her hand. “The stuff Gloria brought back in the van.”

  I frowned. Smuggling marijuana over the Mexican border is a big business in Texas, but I wouldn’t have thought that Gloria—or anybody else—would have attempted to bring it across in a university van. Most of it is hidden in legitimate shipments of agricultural or manufactured products. But it might have been—

  “You’re not going to tell me it was morning glory seeds, are you?” I asked. “Surely there isn’t much of a market in that.”