“But did you find it?” I said.
“Nope,” said Todd. “And I’ll never find it now, because I’ve studied so many goddam houses I’ve forgotten what the one on Mike’s phone looked like.”
“Hang on,” Kathi said. She was balling sports socks at the folding table and firing them into an open laundry bag on the floor. “Why would Mike have evidence photographs on her phone? You never told me that. That’s illegal. Why would she show you proof that she’s done something illegal?”
“Well, she was pretty keen to convince us about all the crap she was spouting,” Todd said. “She was giving more away than usual, wasn’t she, Lexy?”
“Yeah, but,” Kathi said. “What if they weren’t evidence photos? What if they were showing up on her phone because she was logged into a—”
“Yes!” said Todd. “Oh my God. What an idiot I am.” He was scrolling madly.
“Stop,” said Kathi. “No fair. It was my idea. I should find them.”
“Now now, children,” I said. I had no idea what they were each racing to find or I would have stopped slogging through this chunk of quadrupled satin, lining, and boning that was like trying to sew a steak and joined in.
“We got so sidetracked finding the student council,” said Todd, “we completely forgot about the porches in the Voyager!”
“Found it!” said Kathi. “‘Honourable mentions in the seventh Annual Cuento Halloween Porch Decorating Competition. Witches, Tim Burton, Disney, Silence of the Lambs—ooooh, clever!—witches, ghosts, Mama Cuento—that’s genius!—more witches, ghosts, Freddy
… Here he is! What shall we do with the drunken Scotsman? by Mrs. Joan Lampeter of Lark Circle in north Cuento.’”
“Racists!” I said.
“And there it is,” said Todd, back on his virtual map despite the travel sickness. “Sneaky bastards, putting a keyhole cul de sac under the shade trees where I couldn’t see it. Yep, yep, mint green siding, pepper tree. We’ve got her.”
“Why did we want her again?” I said, which went down like salt on a slug.
“Because she completes the set,” Kathi said. “Tam is dead, Patti is missing, John Worth is unconscious, Mo Heedles is uptight enough to puke at the mention of Tam’s name, Mo Tafoya either tried to sell him a parcel of land or lured him here with a promise of it. Joan could be the key that makes sense of everything.”
“Hm,” I said.
“Come on!” she said. “Don’t tell me it’s not worth leaning on Joanie. I have no idea why Mike has decided to let this drop. Suicide? Bullshit! But she is letting it drop and so the only way it’s going to get solved is if someone else solves it.”
“But if Tam’s the kind of guy who can’t even get the cops to care that he had lye poured down his neck, why should we?” I said. “I mean, say what you like about Mike—and I have—she’s not a bent cop, is she?”
“I tell you why I want to solve it,” Todd said. “Because unravelling what happened at the fiftieth reunion is the only way we’ll ever solve what happened at the graduation. This is the only way we’ll find Patti Ortiz.”
“Find her?” said Kathi. “You think so?”
“Find the answer at least,” said Todd. “Find peace for her mother after all these years. What do you say?”
Twenty-Three
Small world,” I said, as we slowed outside the mint green ranch house on Lark Circle and pulled up behind the minivan.
“Huh?” said Todd.
I nodded at the decal in the minivan’s back window. It read 11-01-17 GATO. “This is the cat groomer I was tracking. Didn’t I tell you? The surly one. Thank God Della lucked out in Madding.”
“Huh?” said Kathi. I sighed. It used to happen every day in Cuento. I’d say something and all the eyes would go a bit flat and all the heads would go a bit quirked and I’d know that whoever I was talking to didn’t have a clue what I was trying to say. Sometimes they didn’t have three different clues, stacked up: they couldn’t understand the sounds and, after we sorted that out, they didn’t understand the words and, when that was behind us, that wasn’t what they called it here anyway. The worst one ever was trying to buy curry paste in the budget supermarket, with another level: they didn’t sell it.
It didn’t happen absolutely every time I spoke anymore, but it had happened today. “Joan Lampeter,” I said, “is the cat groomer I’ve been trying to get in touch with. That on the back window of her car is her business contact details.”
Kathi’s eyes came back to life and her head went straight again. “No, Lexy,” she said, with infinite patience, “Joan Lampeter is not a cat groomer.”
“Aha!” I said. “You’re right. Well, it’s not necessarily her anyway. It might be someone else. Whoever the cat groomer is, the pals all help by advertising on their cars too!”
“What are you talking about?” said Kathi.
“There’s an advert on John Worth’s El Camino,” I said, “and I’m sure it wasn’t this minivan I was behind at Swiss Sisters.”
“Are you high?” said Todd. “Have you had a stroke?”
“But even that doesn’t explain why, when I phoned up, they were so weird,” I added.
“That’s a memorial,” said Todd.
“What?” My brain tried to make him be saying That’s immaterial because at least that made sense, but it was a no go.
“That decal on Ms. Lampeter’s car,” said Todd, “is a memorial to her dead cat.”
“What?”
“Use your eyes, Lexy,” he said. “It’s right there in white and black. Gato died on the 1st of November 2017.”
“That’s a date?” I said. “No, that’s not a date. That’s a phone number.”
“Wow,” said Kathi.
“Wow your bloody self!” I snapped. “Why would someone have a memorial to a dead cat on their car?”
“Why would someone have a keychain made out of its jawbone?” Todd said. “People are weird.”
“Or,” said Kathi, “maybe that’s the car that ran it over. Maybe it’s more of a Mad Max kind of a thing.”
I knew they were laughing at me. I let them. That is to say, I flounced off up the path in a huff but I waited until they were beside me and their faces were straight again before I rang the bell.
“Com-ing!” sang a voice from inside and after a moment a woman swept the door wide open with a beaming smile on her face. It dimmed a bit when she saw the three of us. Again, I was sure I had seen her before and it wasn’t the picture in the yearbook. It was the movement of her mouth fading out of a smile and then back into one again when her politeness won out over her surprise.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“Sorry to bother you at home unannounced,” Todd said.
“Not at all!” Joan cried, looking as if we were all her heart desired for some weird reason.
“My name is Lexy Campbell,” I went on.
“Wonderful!” Joan cried.
“And these are—” I tried to add but the rest of the introduction was lost under a racket from somewhere in the house behind her. It sounded like someone dropping a couple of bowling balls into a pyramid of cardboard boxes.
“Is everything okay?” said Todd. He flexed his muscles. They were under a raincoat, which diluted the effect a bit but I could tell what he was doing from the way his eyebrows moved. I really should train him in the ways of women; we can exercise our pelvic floors, let out silent farts, and pass old boyfriends in the street all without any eyebrow involvement. It’s a skill handed down from mother to daughter, like finding stuff and remembering birthdays.
“That?” said Joan, putting a hand to her throat and glancing airily behind her. “That’s just my dog going out of his pet door. He’s shy.”
It must be some pet door, I thought. Because that dog sounded like a Great Dane.
“But come
in, come in,” Joan was saying. “Come in out of the storm.”
We all huddled into her foyer and managed to get our waterproof coats off, ask about shoe removal, wipe them lavishly on the mat when she told us not to worry and move into the house.
It was open-plan, of course, and although she led us to the bit with two sofas facing each other, the kitchen bit was in plain view. One stool was pushed back from the breakfast bar about three feet and stood at an angle. Another one was lying on its back. Either the Great Dane sat on a barstool or he slept under them. Or, and my money was on this, that was a human who had blundered out of sight as we arrived and not from shyness either.
“Poor thing,” I said. “Is he missing Gato?”
There was that look again: flat eyes and quirked head.
“Your shy dog,” Kathi added. “Does he miss your cat?”
“Ohhhhhh!” said Joan, just a bit too loud. “Oh yes. You saw the car, right? Yes. So sad. Such pals. I should take that off, really. It’s been there long enough.” Her hand was fluttering at her neck again. “But anyway,” she said. “What is it I can do for you?”
We all saw the reality dawn on her. She put her hand in her lap at the very moment that she could have done with it at her neck, as the blots of colour crept up out of her collar and spread over her jaw. She had only just realised that she shouldn’t know who we were and shouldn’t have invited us in before we told her what we wanted.
“We are Trinity Solutions,” Todd said, proffering a card. I wondered for a moment what she would say to a make-over artiste, a declutterer, and a counsellor descending on her and parking their bums on her couches for no reason, but then I realised that the Trinity Life Solutions business card was vague enough to fit into more than one slot.
“It’s about what happened after the party,” Todd went on. We had rehearsed this on the way over.
Joan’s flush drained so quickly and so completely I found myself sitting forward a bit on the couch in case she fainted.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes. I read about it in the paper. Very unfortunate.” Our plan was working.
“You read about it in the paper?” I said. “I would have thought you’d have all been talking about it long before it got into the papers.”
“Wh—what?” she said. There was a sheen on her top lip.
“Didn’t Mrs. Ortiz speak to all of you immediately?” said Kathi.
“Mrs. Ortiz?” she said. She curled her lips inwards so she could lick the drops of sweat away without us noticing. She failed. “You mean, Patti’s mom?”
“Right,” I said. “Patti’s mum. She said she spoke to all of you. Well, she would.”
“You spoke to P—Patti’s mom?” She was breathing in high light breaths, so high and so light that the individual hairs on her velour top were winking.
“We did,” said Todd. “She suggested we should speak to you.”
“Me?”
“You, Mo, Mo, and John,” said Kathi. “And Thomas, but of course we can’t talk to him.”
She was going. I sat forward a bit more as she swayed from the waist like a charmed snake and her eyes started to glaze. Then, just before they rolled up in her head, she caught it. “Wait,” she said. “You wanted to talk to Thomas Shatner about what happened after the party?”
“Yes,” I said. “The graduation party. When Patti disappeared. Why, what did you think we were referring to?”
Would it work? It was Todd’s brainwave. He had surmised that if Joan thought we were asking about the reunion, after which came a murder she might be mixed up in, and then found out we weren’t, she might be so relieved she’d say more than was wise.
“I thought you meant the reunion,” she said. “We had some indiscretions.” She plucked a hanky out from up her sleeve and dabbed her face. “Excuse me. I’m just getting over a little stomach issue. I don’t think I’m contagious anymore but I won’t offer refreshments, just in case.” Beside me, Kathi pressed herself back into the couch to maximise the distance between her and Joan, even though she must know Joan was lying. “Yes, undignified as it is, we reverted to our high-school selves after the reunion. There was a certain amount of hotel-room hopping amongst the out-of-towners.”
“And amongst the still-in-towners?” I said.
“I’m single now,” said Joan. “He’s single. No one was hurt.”
It didn’t quite chime with what Becky Worth had said. Drama, she had called it. Phone calls and tears and driving around all night. And she had said it was the same fifty years ago.
“But about the graduation party,” I said, “when everyone lived in town and no one had a hotel room? Patti set off home, we believe, and never made it.”
“Never made it?” Joan said. “What makes you say that? Oh! Mrs. Ortiz, right? You said you spoke to her. And you just believed what she said?”
“We had no reason not to,” I said. “As far as we knew. Is there a reason not to?”
“I should say so!” said Joan. The words sat uneasily in her mouth, too hearty for her overall demeanour. “Mr. Ortiz didn’t want Patti to go to the dance. He certainly didn’t want her to go on afterwards to the … Well, if it was the Oscars you’d call it an after party, but really we just went to a quiet place and turned on all our car radios, to keep dancing. It was a magical night. Until morning came.”
“But Patti didn’t go to the parking place, did she?” I said. “Lover’s Lane kind of thing, is it?”
“Who said that?” Joan looked genuinely surprised. “Was it Mrs. Ortiz again? Good grief, all these years later, all of us in our sixties and she still cares enough to lie!”
“So Patti was there?” Todd said.
“Until dawn,” said Joan. “Like all of us. And then she went home. Like all of us. And I suppose a lot of us got in trouble when our parents saw us. We were hammered. And some of us were pretty dishevelled. I was pregnant! Although I didn’t know it then and that worked out pretty well. Forty happy years with a good man and two lovely children.”
This was a lot to take in. Kathi got on top of it all first.
“So,” she said. “You think Patti Ortiz’s father punished her for staying out late and coming home drunk and … went too far?”
“Yes,” Joan said. “That’s what everyone thought. But no one could prove it. And Mrs. Ortiz never wavered. Either she didn’t know what happened to Patti or she covered for her husband because she didn’t want a husband in jail as well as a daughter in her grave. But that’s what we’ve always believed. It makes sense of everything.”
“Everything like what?” I said.
“Everything like why Tam Shatner left town in such a hurry,” Joan said. “He was terrified Mr. Ortiz would come after him and kill him too.”
“What for?” I said.
Joan swallowed hard. “For … Because … Homophobia?”
“You’re saying he was gay?” said Todd.
“I … don’t … know,” said Joan, looking sick. “It’s all rumors. I just heard things. But I do know for sure that he never came back. Never came near the place again. And this time, this last reunion … I hope God forgives us because I’ll never forgive myself.” Her delivery was getting smoother again. “We said to him Joe Ortiz was dead and the old woman was ancient and no threat to anyone, and we persuaded him to come and see us all again.”
“He was a friend then?” said Todd. “Not ostracized? Not cold-shouldered?”
“He was the class vice president!” Joan said.
“Only John Worth seemed to suggest that Tam was a bit of an outcast and wasn’t welcome.”
“John did?” said Joan. “I don’t know.” She looked around kind of wildly as if someone might pop up to help her. “Maybe it was their old rivalry bubbling up again,” she said. “Everyone loved Tam! And John got jealous. Envious, I should say. He had selected him to be clas
s vice-president and then didn’t Tam take over and become the most popular boy in school? John had the green-eyed monster. And it was just the same at the reunion, crazy as that sounds. Why, when he saw Tam arrive he went over and tried to hustle him away. Frog-marched him practically.”
Finally she had said something that chimed with something else we’d heard already. “When you say John Worth tried to hustle him away,” I asked her, “do you mean he was unsuccessful? Tam stayed at the party?”
“Until the end,” said Joan. “I think.”
“He’s not in any of the pictures,” I said and I must have said it far too baldly because she gave me a sharp look.
“Tam always hated having his picture taken,” she said. “You should see our yearbook. The committee was at its wits’ end with him. They couldn’t snag him for a photograph no matter what they did. And it nearly broke the heart of Patti—not Patti Ortiz, this is another Patti, head of the yearbook drive. It’s such a black mark on their record to have missing pictures. But Tam O’Shanter outwitted them.”
“But what about the photobombs?” said Kathi. “That’s what you’d call them now anyway. When he infiltrated the Homemakers and Nurses and Librarians?”
“What?” said Joan. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you have a yearbook handy?” said Kathi. “We’ll show you.”
“No,” said Joan and she kept her gaze trained on Kathi’s face. She didn’t so much as twitch a single neck muscle in the direction of the floor-to-ceiling bookcase just off to the right. And when Todd stood up and wandered over that way, she gripped the arm of the couch so hard that her ring squeaked against the wood.
“So … ” I said. “I’m just wondering now how much of what Mrs. Ortiz told me was true and how much was misdirection. Were Patti and Tam close? Were they boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Yes,” said Joan. “They were going steady all the way through senior year.”
“Even though he was gay?” I said.
“Maybe he was … exploring … his … phase?” she said. Halting wasn’t the word for it. It was the speech equivalent of that daft wedding walk they do here, like someone’s tied their bootlaces together. “He gave her his class ring at the Christmas hop and by spring break they were inseparable,” Joan went on. And now it was all smooth delivery again.
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