"Well, I didn't fare a whole lot better with your friend Helen Grimes.”
"That must've been a treat.”
"Are you aware that she no longer works for the pen?”
"She never did any work there that I know of. Helen the Hun was lazy as hell unless she was patting down one of the lady guests. Then she got industrious. Donahue liked her, don't ask me why. After he got whacked, she got reassigned to guard tower duty in Greensville and suddenly developed a knee problem or something.
“I have a feeling she knows a lot more than she let m" I said "Especially if she and Donahue were friendly with each other.”
Marino sipped his coffee and looked out the sliding glass doors. The ground was frosted white, and snowflakes seemed to be falling faster. I thought of the snowy night I was summoned to Jennifer Deighton's house, and images flashed in my mind of an overweight woman in curlers sitting in a chair in tie middle of her living room. If the killer had interrogated her, he had done so for a reason. What was it he had been sent to find?
“Do you think the killer was after letters when' he appeared at Jennifer Deighton's house?” I asked Marino.
"I think he was after something that had to do with Waddell. Letters, poems. Things he may have mailed to her over the years.”
"Do you think this person found what he was looking for?”
"Let's just put it this way, he may have looked around, but he was so tidy we couldn't tell.”
"Well, I don't think he found a thing," T said.
Marino looked skeptically at me as he lit another cigarette. "Based on what?”
"Based on the scene. She was in her nightgown and curlers. It appears she had been reading in bed. That doesn't sound like someone who is expecting company," "I'll go along with that.”
"Then someone appears at her door and she must have let him in, because there was no sign of forcible entry and no sign of a struggle. I think what may have happened next is this person demanded that she turn over to him whatever it was he was looking for, and she wouldn't. He gets angry, gets a chair from the dining room, and sets it in the middle of her living room. He sits her in it and basically tortures her. He asks questions, and when she doesn't tell him what he wants to hear he tightens the choke hold. This goes on until it goes too far. He carries her out and puts her in her car.”
"If he was going in and out of the kitchen, that might explain why that door was unlocked when we arrived," Marino considered.
"It might. In summary, I don't think he intended for her to die when she did, and after he tried to disguise her death. He probably didn't hang around very long. Maybe he got scared, or maybe he simply lost interest in his assignment. I doubt he rummaged through her house at all, and I also doubt that he would have found anything if he had.”
"We sure as hell didn't," Marino said.
"Jennifer Deighton was paranoid," I said. "She indicated to Grueman in the fax she sent him that there was something wrong about what was being done to Waddell. Apparently, she'd seen me on the news and had even tried to contact me, but continued to hang up when she got my machine.”
"Are you thinking she might have had papers or something that would tell us what the hell this is all about?”
"If she had," I said, "then she was probably sufficiently frightened to get them out of her house.”
"And stash them where?”
"I don't, know, but maybe her ex-husband would. Didn't she visit him for two weeks the end of November?”
“Yeah.” Marino looked interested. "As n matter of fact, she did.”
'Willie Travers had an energetic, pleasant voice over the phone when I finally reached him at the Pink Shell resort in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. But he was vague and noncommittal when I began to ask questions.
"Mr. Travers, what can I do to make you trust me?” I finally asked in despair.
"Come down here.”
"That's going to be very difficult at moment."
"I'd have to see you.”
"Excuse me?’
"That's the way I am. If I can see you, I can read you and know if you're okay. Jenny was the same way.”
"So if I come down to Fort Myers Beach and let you read me, you will help me?”
"Depends on what I pick up.”
I made airline reservations for six-fifty the following morning. Lucy and I would fly to Miami. I would leave her with Dorothy and drive to Fort Myers Beach, where there was a very good chance I would spend a night wondering if I'd lost my mind. Chances were overwhelming that Jennifer Deighton's holistic health nut of an ex would turn out to be a great big waste of time.
Saturday, the snow had stopped when I got up at four A.M. and went into Lucy's bedroom to wake her. For a moment I listened to her breathe, then lightly touched her shoulder and whispered her name in the dark she stirred and sat straight up. On the plane, she slept to Charlotte, then wallowed in one of her unbearable moods the rest of the way to Miami.
"I'd rather take a cab," she said, staring out the window…
"You can't take a cab, Lucy. Your mother and her friend will be looking for you.”
"Good. Let them drive around the airport all day. Why can't I come with you?”
"You need to go home, and I need to drive straight to Fort Myers Beach, and then I'm going to fly from there back to Richmond. Trust me. It wouldn't be any, fun.”
"Being with Mother and her latest idiot isn't any fun, either.”
"You don't know he's an idiot. You've never met him. Why don't you give him a chance?”
"I wish Mother would get AIDS.”
"Lucy, don't say such a thing.”
"She deserves it I don't understand how she can sleep with every dickhead who takes her out to dinner and a movie. I don't understand how she can be your sister.”
"Lower your voice," I whispered.
"If she missed me so much, she'd want to pick me up herself. She wouldn't want someone else around.”
"That's not necessarily true," I told her. "When you fall in love someday, you'll understand better.”
"What makes you think I've never been in love?” She looked furiously at me.
"Because if you had been, you would know that being in love brings out both the best and the worst in us. One day we're generous and sensitive to a fault, and the next we're not fit to shoot. Our lives become lessons in extremes.”
"I wish Mother would hurry up and go through menopause.”
Mid-afternoon, as I drove the Tamiami Trail in and out of the shade, I patched up the holes guilt had chewed into my conscience. Whenever I dealt with my family, I felt irritated. and annoyed. Whenever I refused to deal with them, I felt the same way I had as a child, when I learned the art of running away without leaving home. In a sense, I had become my father after he died. I was the rational one who made A's and knew how to cook and handle money. I was the one who rarely cried and whose reaction to the volatility in my disintegrating home was to cool down and disperse like a vapor. Consequently, my mother and sister accused me of indifference, and I grew up harboring a secret shame that what they said was true.
I arrived in Fort Myers Beach with the air-conditioning on and the visor down to shield the sun. Water met the sky in a continuum of vibrant blue, and palms were bright green feathers atop trunks as sturdy as ostrich legs. The Pink Shell resort was the color of its name. It backed up to Estero Bay and threw its front balconies open wide to the Gulf of Mexico. Willie Travers lived in one of the cottages, but I was not due to meet him until eight P.M. Checking into a one bedroom apartment, I literally left a trail of clothes on the floor as I snatched off my winter suit and grabbed shorts and a tennis shirt out of my bag. I was out the door and on the beach in seven minutes.
I did not know how many miles I walked, for I lost track of time, and each stretch of sand and water looked magnificently the same: I watched bobbing pelicans throw their heads back as they downed fish like shots of bourbon, and I deftly stepped around the flaccid blue balloons of beached Portuguese men-of-war. Most people I passed were old. Occasionally, the high-pitched voice of a child lifted above the roar of waves like a bit of bright paper carried by the wind. I picked up sand dollars worn smooth by the surf and beached shells reminiscent of peppermints sucked thin. I thought of Lucy and missed her again.
