5 Highball Exit (4 page)

CHAPTER 9

Dan Raines and his wife, Shelly, lived at the south end of Sarasota, about forty-five minutes north of Jacaranda.

Dan was already in his police uniform when he opened the door. He was overly cheerful but his eyes were wary. He tried to pretend that it was completely normal for me to knock on his door at quarter after eight on a Sunday night, only hours after he found the body of someone we both knew, something we didn’t mention in front of Shelly.

After Dan and Shelly showed me around their new townhome and I cooed over Hannah, Shelly went off to put their baby to bed. Dan and I went outside, taking drinks with us.

The patio was a boxlike enclosure about ten by ten and stuffed with plants hanging on the wooden fence, a glass table with four chairs and a colossal barbeque shoved up against the fence. The smell of charred steak still lingered in the air.

As a kid, Dan Raines had been what you might call plump. Kids, not so nice, called him fat up until he was about twelve. That’s when a big change happened to Dan. Around puberty the plumpness turned to muscle and the fireplug of a boy turned into a running back. It was the making of Dan. In high school, shining on both the football and wrestling teams, Dan went all the way to the state championships, and his self-confidence reflected his success.

Now, sitting across from me, Dan looked like a guy meant to be in uniform. His thick auburn hair was cut short and his square jaw was clean shaven. Everything about his appearance said upright and dependable, a man you could trust with your life.

The air conditioner hummed beside us but still I glanced up the side of the house to make sure all the windows were closed against the sweltering night. I didn’t want Shelly to overhear Dan and me talking about Holly.

I watched Dan’s face for a reaction and said, “Holly Mitchell is dead.”

Dan sat up straighter. “Really? I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Comes as a surprise to you, does it?”

“Well, yes, of course. What happened?”

“It seems she committed suicide.”

“Too bad.” He frowned. “She was usually pretty happy when she was a kid, although given the kind of person she became, perhaps it isn’t unexpected.”

“Why? What had she become? What was there about her that would lead to this?”

“She was a dipstick.” Dan ran a hand over the kinked remnants of his curls. “She never stopped dreaming, never faced reality. How did she get like that?”

“How did you get to be a cop?”

Dan gave a soft snort of amusement, or perhaps disgust. “I never meant to be a cop. I was headed for law school, but I didn’t like being caged in an office with books all day. I wanted action.” With a wry smile he said, “It turns out policing is more like being a babysitter for adults who make really dumb choices. I thought it would be more about figuring out things and helping people, but it’s more like telling a drunk, ‘No, sir, you can’t piss in that fountain,’ or, ‘No, lady, you can’t drive on the sidewalk.’ Adults doing really stupid things make up
95
per cent of my job.”

“Mine too.” He grinned. Then he said, “How can Holly be dead?”

Dan wasn’t really expecting an answer. It was more like he was exploring the whole idea of Holly being lifeless. He planted his forearms on his thighs and clasped his hands between his knees, studying the concrete slabs beneath his feet.

I waited.

Finally he lifted his head and said, “Did you drive all the way up from Jac just to tell me Holly is gone?”

“Yeah, that’s about it.” I took a sip of my beer. “There’s a big difference in age between you and Holly, nearly ten years. How come you knew her so well?”

“We lived next door to each other. Back then the grade school kids and the high school kids took the same school bus.” He pushed the soda can away from him. “Remember? We all rode together in the same white-roofed bus going over the north bridge to school in Jacaranda. Coming home, Holly and I both got off at the corner before you.”

His handsome face screwed up in some kind of emotion I couldn’t read. “She always wanted to walk home with me but I’d run ahead. I hated it when she spoke to me on the bus. It was embarrassing. I got teased for it. I told her over and over not to talk to me. I was kinda mean to her.”

As I remembered it, I’d treated Dan just about the same. A year or two younger than me, in high school I never wanted to hang out with him or even acknowledge him in the halls. He was just a kid, a nuisance with all his eager enthusiasm.

“So you didn’t expect this from Holly?” I reached out and touched the drop of condensation sliding down my beer bottle. “Expect her to kill herself?”

He shook his head slowly. “She was always so optimistic, absolutely convinced that things were about to be wonderful.”

“I could use a little of that. These days, I tend to expect the worst.” I tilted up the Budweiser and then asked, “When did you see her last?”

He shrugged. “It’s been ages.”

“Aunt Kay said Holly was crazy about you and always kept in touch.”

He glanced up at me and frowned. “Not so much anymore, not since I got married.”

“Didn’t Shelly like it? I mean, didn’t Shelly like you hanging out with Holly?”

“I didn’t hang with Holly, and ’sides it has nothing to do with Shelly.” His voice was sharp. “The last time we saw Holly she had purple hair and was strung out on something. Shelly pretty much felt sorry for Holly the few times they met.”

“So when was that, when did you see her last?”

“About a year ago. Like I said, I haven’t really seen her since I got married.” Dan was brushing off my idle questions with answers he hadn’t really thought out. He had been married pretty close to three years, but I didn’t bother pointing out this disconnect in his story.

If he’d been the one to find Holly’s dead body, he was over it. Or maybe there was another reason he was distancing himself from Holly.

I set the bottle on the table. “Don’t shit me, Dan. The cops told Aunt Kay that an Officer Raines was first on the scene and found the body. You knew she was dead before I showed up on your doorstep.”

He opened his mouth to deny it, but read my face and thought better of it. “Don’t tell. I don’t want it to come out that I was any more than the cop on duty when the call came in. There’s no need for anyone to know.”

“What don’t you want people to know, that you were bonking her, or that you had something to do with her death?”

“Shit, Sherri.” His fist slammed the glass table. I reached out and caught my beer before it could fall. He looked around, afraid someone might overhear. He looked up at the house and then stood up to check that his neighbors weren’t outside. When he swung back to face me I could see the violence in him as he fought for control and searched for a lie.

“No matter what you come up with I’m not going to buy it,”

I said. “You had an affair with Holly. What was she, nineteen . . . twenty?”

His mouth was an angry slit and his jawbone worked under his skin. “It wasn’t like that.”

“No? What was it like? Did you push her around, beat her up? Aunt Kay said someone hurt her.”

“It wasn’t me. Christ, how could you think that?”

“So tell me what it was like, Dan.”

“It was stupid.” He breathed deeply and let it out slowly, forcing himself to calm down. “She was always so eager, so wanting to please, so . . .” He looked away. “It only lasted for a few weeks and then I found out that Shelly was pregnant. I really wanted a kid. We’ve been trying since we got married. Shelly went for tests and we knew it might not happen. But then she was pregnant. We were so happy.”

“Tell me about Holly.”

“I told Holly it was over. The thing with Holly didn’t mean anything.”

Those were the words Jimmy always used when he begged me to take him back. “I’m sure it meant something to Holly.”

He ran the back of his hand across his mouth. “She took it hard. I had to tell her again and again to stop calling and leaving me messages. Once, I came off shift and found a pink note stuck under my wiper blades. She just didn’t give up, didn’t get it. We were over. I never saw her again after the day I told her it was done.”

“You mean you never saw her again while she was alive. Why didn’t you identify Holly instead of leaving it up to Aunt Kay? You could’ve done that without telling the cops anything more.”

“I panicked. I can’t afford to be associated with Holly.” He leaned forward. “I could see bruising on her face. Someone had worked her over. She’d lost weight, didn’t look good. I think she’d really had a hard time of it in this last year.”

I waited. “There’s something else. Don’t tell anyone, will you?”

“No,” I lied.

CHAPTER 10

“Her cell was there on the table. I checked it. It had some messages on it.”

He glanced at the house before he told me his ugly news. “They called back several times, getting more pissed with her each time. The messages were reminding her of a date. I checked the number. It was an escort service.”

Dan picked up his soda and set it down again. “It wouldn’t do my career any good if my superiors found out I’d been involved with a sex worker. That’s why I couldn’t identify her.”

“Was she a sex worker before she slept with you, or is that what you turned her into?”

“This has nothing to do with me.” His voice was too loud. He lowered his voice. “It was long done between us. Whatever she became, however she died, it has nothing to do with me.”

“For god’s sake, you could have at least admitted you knew her. I wasn’t expecting you to tell anyone you screwed her. Instead you left it to a sick old woman to go to the morgue and identify her.”

“I’m sorry.”

He sounded like a petulant little boy, more worried about being in trouble than if he hurt someone.

“Tell it to Aunt Kay.”

We stayed silent for the length of time it took me to drink the second half of my beer and then I asked, “Was that how she was found? Did the escort service call the police?”

He looked down at the patio stones. “Maybe. I was only told an anonymous call was made. I was the patrol in the area so I was sent to check it out. The super let me in.”

“Wasn’t that an interesting fluke? Officer Raines was the uniform on duty, the cop called to check out Holly’s apartment.”

“Things like that happen. I’ve been sent twice to accidents where I knew people.”

“Yeah? Well, I stopped believing in coincidences when I found my Christmas presents under my mother’s bed, the same ones that were wrapped and under the tree from Santa on Christmas morning.”

The angry silence stretched between us. Finally, I said, “Was anyone else living in the apartment?”

“No sign of it.”

“So what’s the name of this escort service?”

“Why?” He straightened. “Stay out of this. It’s none of your business.” He was a cop again and taking control.

“Okay.” I changed the subject. “It’s hard to believe, hard to get your head around. Not only that Holly is dead, but that this is what she became. She was always so sweet, even with the nastiest, hardestto-please diners. Aunt Kay said she wanted to be an actress or a model from the time she was a little girl.”

He met my eyes now. “Maybe that’s why she killed herself. Maybe she quit believing in her dreams.”

“They showed Aunt Kay her note.”

“We always show the family the suicide note. It helps them understand, or maybe it’s just to convince them it happened, and we need them to identify the handwriting.”

I got a pen and a piece of paper out of my purse. “Write down her words, just like in the note.”

He started to argue. “I can always call and request it.”

“They won’t tell you.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve got such a big mouth, you never know what will slip out.”

His jaw hardened and tiny bulges jumped in his cheek. It was touch and go if he was going to throw me out or do as I asked. He picked up the pen and pulled the paper towards him and wrote quickly.

He shoved it back at me and I read,because my Angel is gone and I can’t live without my Angel. I have no home and no one to look after me. I have nothing left. This is the only way.

It was signed, “Love, Holly.”

“Was this what it said?”

“Exactly. It’s precisely the same as her note. You might not realize it, but I’m damn good at my job. I don’t make mistakes.”

I so wanted to point out the obvious exception.

“It’s just that it’s an odd note. The first word doesn’t begin with a capital letter. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“It’s a suicide note, not an English essay.”

“Still . . . things like that are habits. Holly was always meticulous about taking orders.” Suddenly I was struck by a horrible idea. “Are you sure she committed suicide?”

His hand slammed on the glass table. “Don’t go turning this into some big mystery. It isn’t. She killed herself . . . end of story.”

I shoved the paper and pen back into my purse and said, “Holly was okay, nice really, but sometimes she got on my nerves, always wanting to hang out after work. I was past girls like her.”

Dan tilted back on his chair. “When we were kids we all wanted to be around you. You were always the one who started things, sometimes trouble but always fun.”

“Things change. I used to think I could handle anything. Not so much these days.”

His chair thudded onto the concrete and he nodded in agreement. “That’s how I felt until I found Holly. I thought I was immune to shock but seeing her . . .” He didn’t finish.

Somewhere down the row of houses a door slammed and a voice called out a name.

I watched Dan closely. “Aunt Kay is convinced that Holly had a baby.”

Dan’s mouth gaped open. His spine straightened and he pushed back against the chair where he’d been lounging. “What? No, no way, she didn’t have a baby.” If he was lying, it was a damn good act.

“Aunt Kay says she did. She wants to know what happened to the baby.”

“Well, she’s wrong. There was no baby. It never happened.”

I looked at the pile of wooden blocks sitting on the table. “How old is Hannah?”

He didn’t answer.

I peeled the label off the damp bottle. “She’s not a year yet, is she?” Still he didn’t respond, couldn’t even look at me.

“Holly must have got pregnant about the same time as Shelly.”

“Oh, shit,” he said.

“Did you know about Holly’s baby?”

“God, no!” I believed him, but he wouldn’t be the first liar I’d believed.

He ran his hand over his head. “What makes Aunt Kay think Holly had a baby?” You could see he was hungry for it all to be a stupid mix-up. “She’s old and she’s got it wrong.”

“Holly came by with the baby and wanted Aunt Kay to look after her.”

“There was no sign of a baby in that apartment. I followed procedure and looked through every room to make sure there was no one else there, alive or dead. There was no sign of a kid. The apartment was totally clean and neat, like a model suite ready for a showing.”

“Maybe someone should find out what happened to Holly’s baby. Will you help me, Dan?”

“Shit, no, it has nothing to do with me.” We both knew he was wrong there. “And you’re sure Holly’s death was a suicide?”

“You read the note. She’d lost her angels or something. You know what she was like. That’s why I thought . . .” He ran his hands over his head. “I thought she’d finally come face to face with the truth. She was never going to be rich and famous.”

Living without dreams, giving up on her dreams? It was possible. “The note was written on pink notepaper and it had an emptyhighball glass sitting on it. I figure she washed down some pills with a strong drink.”

“Was there an empty pill bottle?”

“Not that I saw, but I didn’t check the garbage. That’s up to the investigators. The autopsy will tell what she used.”

“Can you get the autopsy results?”

“Why?” He looked at me warily. “Why do you want to know how she died?”

“Idle curiosity.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Why would I threaten you?”

Why indeed? One more thing was worrying me. “Dan, if Holly called you before she died, if you made an anonymous call, knowing you’d be the one who would be sent to check her out, your cell phone number is on her phone. You can’t hide from that.”

He stared at me without answering.

“But of course you wouldn’t be that stupid. You’d have used a payphone. Or maybe you have a throwaway.”

He looked up at the sky that was alive with color from the dying sun. “Remember the night we all went skinny dipping out at Rum Bay? Nights like that, when you wanted to stop time and just stay where you were forever—how come we don’t have nights like that anymore, Sherri? When did life get so serious?”

“Maybe that’s what happens when you grow up.”