Body Language (14 page)

“Oh?” I gestured that we should sit. She chose the love seat near the fire, I the adjacent chair. “May I get you some coffee?” Mine was at hand on a nearby table.

“Thank you, no.” Wryly, she added, “Too many stimulants already today.”

Joking, I added, “Then how about a
drink?
”

To my surprise, though it was not yet nine o’clock, she paused to consider my offer. “Still a bit early, thanks—even for me!”

We shared a laugh, and when it subsided, I prompted her, “I’m all ears, Glee.”

She collected her thoughts, then began. “This goes back thirty years, come spring. No lady enjoys dating herself, but I’ll admit that it was during my first year out of journalism school, when I was twenty-two. I was a cub reporter at the
Register,
where I have subsequently spent my entire career. In those early days, long before I had an inkling that I would one day serve as the paper’s features editor, I worked on what was then termed the ‘women’s page’—softer news, the social scene, weddings, food, and such. Covering preparations for the Dumont High spring cotillion (God, I
am
dating myself!), I was assigned to work up profiles on candidates for queen of the formal event, including Suzanne Quatrain.”

“Ahhh.” I leaned forward to ask her, “Should I be taking notes?” My pen, as always, was clipped inside my pocket, but I would need to find a pad.

She shook her head. “There’s not much detail, just my own speculation. I wish I had more.”

“Tell me what you know.” I reached for my coffee, swirled the cup, and swallowed some. Finding it tepid, I returned the cup to the table.

She snapped open her bag and extracted first a delicate pair of half-frame reading glasses, perching them on her nose, then a folded newspaper clipping. Careful not to tear the creased old newsprint, she examined it briefly and passed it to me. Faded mug shots of a dozen high school girls, all with the same ratted hairdo, smiled up at me from the foxed and musty page.

Glee said, “Suzanne was seventeen then, a junior. As you can see, she was truly a beauty.” Sure enough, posed alphabetically between Missy Palmer and Heidi Renquist was the pretty Suzanne Quatrain I had met during my boyhood visit. The photo was snapped three years later, but still, it captured the essence of the perky young lady I’d known when I was nine. Glee continued. “Suzanne’s charming appearance, combined with her family’s wealth and her own gregarious personality, made her the most popular girl in her class, a shoo-in for cotillion royally.” Glee paused, leaning toward me. “But something peculiar happened.”

I looked up from the murky image of grayed dots on yellowed paper. “What?”

“She withdrew from the running.” Glee crossed her arms.

This was not the climax I’d expected. I wondered, So what?

Glee amplified, “She withdrew from the running—without explanation—then missed the dance and nearly a week of school, claiming some routine ailment. But there was other evidence that Suzanne left town for that period, and there was a general consensus that she was never quite the same after she returned. Needless to say, I smelled a story.”

“I don’t blame you. What’d you do?”

“Nothing. Barret Logan wouldn’t hear of it. The Quatrains were far too important to the community, he said, to be hounded by the local press. Case closed. But I have
always
wondered what that episode was about, and now I wonder if it could possibly relate to Suzanne’s murder.”

I stood, puzzled. Crossing to the fireplace, I turned to tell Glee, “I don’t follow that. Sure, Suzanne’s earlier disappearance is intriguing, but why would you think it has some connection to her murder, thirty years later?”

Glee also stood, stepping near to explain, “Over the last year or so, Suzanne spent a lot of time at the
Register
’s offices, doing research in the paper’s morgue.”

“She mentioned some sort of project,” I recalled.

“It’s not clear what she was digging for, but all of her research focused on the year or two after her high school graduation.” Glee bit her lip, smearing lipstick on her front teeth. She concluded, “There
was
a story there—I’m sure of it. And I think that Suzanne had almost discovered its last chapter.”

Abortion?” suggested Neil.

“A reasonable theory,” I answered. “It’s the first thing that occurred to me.”

It was around noon that day, and we were out for a run. Neil had slept late that morning while I met with Glee Savage and, later, perused the
Register.
When Neil appeared in the doorway to the den, he was already wearing sweats and running shoes. “We’re getting fat,” he told me.

We weren’t getting fat, but the message was clear enough—we’d been lax in this routine since our arrival in Dumont. I returned his grin and, without a word, put down my paper and trotted upstairs to change. Within three minutes, I was back in the front hall, where Neil was doing some stretches at the foot of the stairs. Leaving the house together through the front door, we jogged down the sidewalk toward the street, and I was grateful to note that the earlier gapers’ block had thinned to an occasional slow drive-by. I told Neil, “Maybe everyone’s in church.”

I wore a heavy sweatshirt, but no sweatpants, just my usual running shorts, knowing I would generate enough heat of my own to keep me comfortable. Sunday morning had turned bright, and while it was still cold—well below freezing—there was no wind. The light snow that had fallen Christmas Eve still stuck to the grass and the branches of trees, but the streets were clear of ice, splotched with salty puddles that steamed in the sunlight. All in all, conditions were pleasant for a run.

We were heading down a side street toward a park I thought I remembered, exploring the neighborhood, enjoying each other’s company, trying to clear our heads of yesterday’s grim events. But it was impossible, of course, to dismiss Suzanne’s murder, and I related to Neil the “matter of some delicacy” broached to me by Glee Savage.

Continuing our discussion of the abortion theory, I told him, “It all fits—the secrecy, the travel, the timing. Abortion wasn’t legal in Wisconsin till
Roe v. Wade
, but there was a period prior to that when a lot of people flew to New York, where it was legal. Suzanne’s incident fits that time frame.”

Running at my side, Neil commented, “That would certainly explain why everything was so hush-hush about Suzanne withdrawing from the cotillion. The pregnancy itself would have been scandal enough in those days. Add an abortion to the plot, and you’ve got a doozy.”

“I’ll say,” I told him, “especially when you consider that the Quatrain family has always been staunchly Catholic, right down to its French roots. Hazel mentioned to me yesterday that Suzanne had distanced herself from the church sometime during high school.”

Neil snorted. “Now we know why—if our theory is correct.”

“That’s a big ‘if,’” I reminded him. “The abortion theory is pure speculation, and it leaves a lot of details unanswered.”

Neil broke stride. “Like what?” he asked, then caught up with me.

I stopped. “How’d she get pregnant?”

Neil stopped, turned, faced me with a grin. “The usual way, I imagine.”

I walked the few paces between us, standing in front of Neil. “I mean”—my steamy breath mingled with his as I spoke—“was it a simple matter of a dumb kid getting knocked up, or was there more to it, something more… serious?”

Panting, thinking, Neil nodded. “Intriguing thought. But we’ll never know.”

“Probably not.” The park lay just ahead now, and our run had been interrupted, so I suggested, “Care to stroll for a while?”

“Sure. Show me the park. Chances are, there’ll be no crowds to contend with.”

He was right, of course. There were no other people in sight, not even a car. Our pathway narrowed between banks of pines, and the houses of the town disappeared. Spreading before us was nothing but the glacial moraine that had carved the area’s rolling landscape ages before it was settled by the French or the Indians or even the deer. A tarry scent of balsam mingled with the midday chatter of invisible birds who lunched on morsels of nothing high in the trees. Below, down a ravine, the silver thread of a creek lay frozen in time. Something furry foraged at its bank.

Stopping at the path’s edge, gazing at it all, I sighed a wordless appreciation of the quiet spectacle.

Neil stood before me and draped his arms over my shoulders. With his lips nearly touching my face, he said, “Let’s horse around.”

That
was unexpected. “Here?” I asked, assuming he was joking. In case he was serious, I added, “It’s cold.” Running had kept me plenty warm, but our ambling walk hadn’t burned many calories, and my bare legs now stung against the December air. “Besides, the district attorney would be more than happy to book me on suspicion of murder—no point in compounding it with a public-indecency charge.” My tone was jocular, but I couldn’t have been more serious.

A glint caught Neil’s eye. “Race you home,” he challenged. “That’ll warm you up. Maybe there?”

“Maybe there,” I agreed, “but no race—let’s just enjoy the run home together.”

And we did. Watching Neil trot at my side, I thought of the first time we ran together on Christmas morning three years ago in Phoenix, where he then lived. There was no need to bundle against the cold that day—we ran bare-chested. And when we returned to his mountainside home, I made love to a man for the first time in my life. No wonder the shared act of running continued to be so erotically charged for both of us, often a prelude to sex.

I knew, though, that our return to the house on Prairie Street would not precipitate a tumble before the fire. The house was still full of guests, and the anxieties of both the move and the murder had taken their toll on our passions. Neil and I had not engaged in any meaningful intimacy since our arrival in Dumont a week earlier. So I looked forward to the following weekend, New Year’s, when, by terms of our arrangement, I would “visit” Neil at our loft in Chicago. Visions of a second honeymoon danced in my head. A black-tie dinner at Zaza’s, perhaps a concert, then back home for champagne, a few ounces of beluga…

“Thad certainly seemed sullen this morning,” Neil interrupted my thoughts.

With a cynical laugh, I observed, “He’s not the bubbly type.” (I must have still had the New Year’s bottle of Dom on my mind.)

Neil looked over at me. “I mean, his mother was murdered yesterday. You’d think he’d be
grief
-stricken, but he just acts like he’s pissed.”

We dashed along for a few moments, our legs moving in unison, while I mulled this. “People react differently to sudden loss. Maybe he hasn’t quite grasped it yet. I haven’t seen him yet today. What was he doing?”

“He was in the kitchen with Hazel. She’s the only one in the house he opens up to. Get this: He wasn’t interested in breakfast. He was going out with friends. He borrowed money for a burger.”

We turned onto Prairie Street, and the house was in sight, a block away. “I suppose I should try talking to him, but I doubt that he’ll listen.”

Neil suggested, “Read him the riot act on split infinitives.
That
’ll get his attention.”

Because Christmas had fallen on Saturday, Monday was part of a long holiday weekend, so all of the houseguests were still in Dumont. The Chicagoans (Roxanne, Carl, and Neil, but not I) would drive home later that afternoon.

That morning, Neil and I decided to go for a run again, this time inviting Parker Trent to join us. When we gathered in the front hall, I noticed at once that the soft, conforming fleece of Parker’s sweatpants displayed his ass to even greater advantage than did his chinos. This was a detail that Neil would not be likely to miss, and I could predict with near certainty that as our run progressed, we would jockey to let Parker take the lead.

“You’ll freeze out there,” Parker told me, gazing at my bare legs.

Stubbornly, I had again decided against sweats, even though the weather was a few degrees colder still. I assured Parker, “If we keep the pace up, I’ll be fine.” To Neil I added, “No dawdling in the park this time.”

“Yes, master,” he quipped, then opened the front door. Sheriff Douglas Pierce was trudging up the walk, huddled into the collar of his topcoat. Neil turned back to me. “Uh-oh.”

“’Morning, Doug,” I called to him. “Come on in.”

He rushed the final few steps and, closing the door behind him, greeted the three of us in the front hall.

I explained, “We were just going out for a run.”

“You’ll freeze out there,” he told me, glancing at my knees while rubbing his gloved hands together.

“So I’ve been told—but I may need to postpone it, now that you’re here.”

“Thanks,” he said, unbuttoning his coat. “We really should talk.”

I turned to Neil and Parker. “Sorry, guys. I have a hunch this may take a while. Why don’t you go ahead without me?”

“We can wait,” they assured me. “It’s no problem.”

“No,” I decided for them, “go ahead. I’ll try to get out later.” I opened the door for them. Neil gave me a hug, Parker cuffed my shoulder, and they both took off down the sidewalk. Leading Pierce into the den, I asked, “What’s up?”

“We need to do some brainstorming,” he told me, removing his coat, hanging it behind the door. “Harley Kaiser, Dumont’s esteemed district attorney, is already pressuring me to make an arrest.”

“And the short list of suspects,” I guessed, “includes a certain journalist, a recent transplant from Chicago.” I gestured that we should sit, not at the desk today, but in the more comfortable grouping of furniture near the fireplace.

“Right,” he confirmed, settling into an armchair. “So I’m looking for ideas to broaden the investigation.”

I sat on the love seat, and we made an incongruous-looking pair. He was dressed as before in his dapper gray flannels, this time with a sportcoat of muted sage plaid and a nubby silk tie with a perfect Windsor knot. By contrast, I wore an old (very old) Illini sweatshirt, a pair of loose cotton running shorts, and Reeboks.

With a laugh, I asked him, “What makes you so sure I
didn’t
do it?”

“Instinct, I guess. For whatever reason, I trust you. But Kaiser doesn’t. You’re the outsider in this case, and that’s a strike against you in his book. He’s very reluctant to pursue anything against Thad—the boy’s name may have been on his dying mother’s lips, but he’s a Quatrain. As for Miriam Westerman, she has denied your housekeeper’s claim that she was here at the time of the murder, and Kaiser will be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt—he and Miriam have forged something of an odd political alliance. The bottom line is this: If I’m unable to divert Kaiser with some reasonable alternate theories, he’ll expect me to haul you in. So let’s put our heads together.”