Entombed (15 page)

"Show me the money."

"Payday's next Friday.
You guessing, Mercer?"

He pointed at the
screen. Two of the contestants had left blank spaces where the question
should have been. "I'm no further along than they are."

"I'm sorry to say
you're wrong, Josh," Trebek told the dog obedience school owner from
Wichita.

"You must be one lousy
poker player, Coop. You got that
shit-eating-I-majored-in-literature-at-Wellesley grin on your face,"
Mike said, walking to the door. "Subtlety will never be your strong
suit. So, what was-?"

"
Pamela.
By Samuel Richardson.
Published in England in 1740 and reprinted by Franklin. It was subtitled
Virtue Rewarded,
'cause it's about a
young woman who eludes the lecherous advances of the man she works
for," I said, folding and pocketing Mercer's money.

"C'mon. Add the twenty
to my tab and let's go find out more about Emily Upshaw. If you spent a
little less time with your nose in your books and a little more effort
practicing your social skills, you might be able to hold on to a guy
once he makes it into your bedroom and under the sheets."

"Is that where you
think I lose my men?"

"Gotta be, blondie.
You're doing something wrong there."

Mercer put his arm
around me as Mike walked ahead of us down the dark hallway.

"I guess what I really
need is an expert like you to teach me, Mike. Hands-on. How come it
never occurred to me before now? You up for a lesson tonight?"

Mike stopped in his
tracks. He turned around to face us and began to comb his fingers
through the lock of dark hair that framed his forehead. The overhead
lights were dim but I could swear he was blushing.

"Mercer, did you hear
what I think I just heard?"

"Yeah, and it sounds
as though my lawyer is calling your bluff."

"Just like you, Coop.
You wait until I get a girl of my own. Then she leaves town and in a
heartbeat you try to throw temptation in my path. It won't work this
time."

"Why are you doing
that stroking thing with your hair? Am I making you nervous?"

He put his hands in
his pants pocket and started walking to the elevator. "The way I figure
it is I've got the best of both worlds. There isn't anyone in either of
our jobs who doesn't think we've slept together already-which may be
great for my reputation or really bad, depending on what they think of
you. But it means I don't actually have to risk finding out whether you
really do have a set of razor-sharp teeth in the lining of your-"

"You're a dog,
Chapman," Mercer said.

"Unhand that woman,
Mercer. Here she is, propositioning me-and you're trying to hold her
back."

"As far as I'm
concerned, you either come home with me tonight or you stop yapping
about my sex life."

"I told you I'm just
worried about Valentine's Day. You're gonna be cold and lonely."

"I'm booked. You can
relax."

"Who? What unwitting
sucker stepped into the batter's box this time?"

The elevator doors
opened and we got on. "Tell him nothing, Alex," Mercer said.

Mike teased me all the
way down to the lobby and out to his car. By the time we reached the
morgue, I had gotten him off the subject and back to the sobering topic
of Emily Upshaw's death.

Dr. Chet Kirschner,
the chief medical examiner, left instructions for us to use his office
for our meeting with Emily's sister. The attendant admitted us, and we
found the woman sitting alone, her head bowed with eyes closed and her
fingers twisting an already crumpled handkerchief.

We introduced
ourselves and explained our roles in the investigation. Sally Brandon
appeared to be close to fifty, taller and slimmer than her younger
sister. She had just viewed the body and was trying to compose herself
as she spoke to us.

Mike and Mercer
answered most of the questions Brandon asked about her sister's murder.
Mercer took the lead; his firm but compassionate manner, practiced with
great frequency in the Special Victims Unit, was usually comforting to
victims and survivors. Mike's preference for working homicides was in
no small measure based on his aversion to the emotional hand-holding
that always slowed down an investigation that he was eager to solve.

When the two of them
ran out of answers for Sally Brandon, they started to ask her about
Emily.

"She was the youngest,
Mr. Wallace. I'm seven years older, and our other sister was right in
between. We were a close family growing up, but when I went off to
college at eighteen, Emily was only eleven."

"What was your
relationship like, as adults?"

Sally fumbled with the
handkerchief. "We didn't have one, I'm afraid. I married right after
college and had children of my own. She moved to New York, and that's
when Emily really began to make my parents' lives miserable."

"In what way?"

She sighed before
answering. "I'm still so resentful of all the trouble she caused back
then. It sounds pretty rough, I guess, now that she's dead."

"Tell us about it."

"Betsy and I-she's the
middle sister-were a tough pair for Emily to follow. Our parents were
very serious, churchgoing Presbyterians, and we were the two daughters
who never caused them to lose a minute's sleep. Emily was a rebel from
the moment she hit adolescence. She hung out with a fast crowd of older
kids and started drinking by the time she was in middle school."

"Drugs, too?" Mercer
asked.

"Nobody knew at the
time. Just because no one in the family imagined anything like that. I
was away at college and don't even know what symptoms Emily was
presenting to them. Mother was in complete denial, and my father
thought that the power of prayer would solve all his concerns. Nobody
talked about it."

"Did she stay in
school?"

"That was the only
thing that grounded her. Emily loved school, enjoyed everything that
had to do with books. She'd always been able to escape through her
writing." Sally Brandon stopping wrapping her handkerchief around her
finger and looked up at me. "Don't ask me how she did it, but she
managed to get high grades and test well, even when she was in the
middle of a binge."

"Was she ever in
treatment back home?"

She shook her head.
"That wasn't a concept my parents understood. It would have meant
admitting that Emily had a problem."

"They ignored
everything?"

"Not everything, Mr.
Wallace. It was hard to look the other way when she was six months
pregnant."

"When was that, Mrs.
Brandon?"

"During Emily's senior
year of high school. Not that it should have come as a great surprise
to any of us, but it certainly shocked my parents. They couldn't-" She
stopped to compose herself before going on. "In their little town of
eighteen hundred people, it was unacceptable at the time. So they sent
her to live with me."

"And she had her baby?"

Sally Brandon nodded
and the tears started again. "A little girl. Yes."

"What became of the
baby? Did she give her up for adoption?"

"No, Miss Cooper. I
agreed to raise the child as my own. I had two boys at the time. I took
her into my family on one condition: that Emily never have anything to
do with her daughter or with me again. Ever."

That seemed like an
awfully harsh resolution to the situation. "She agreed to that?"

"It seemed to suit her
just fine," Brandon said, sitting bolt upright and looking me in the
eye. "A month before she delivered, we left Emily at home babysitting
our two boys while we went to a neighbor's house for dinner. She was
into her second bottle of wine, asleep on the sofa, when her cigarette
dropped out of her hand and set fire to the slipcovers. She and my sons
escaped unhurt, by the grace of God, but if I ever saw her again it
would be too soon for me."

"I understand," Mercer
said, refilling her water glass from the sink behind her.

"So she graduated from
high school and got a scholarship to go to New York University, pleased
to leave me with her baby. Emily resented all of us with our happy
little families and thought the big city would be the place to live her
life unencumbered by the conventions of small-town mores."

"And her deal with
you? Did she keep it?"

"Quite faithfully. Her
baby was conceived in a haze of bourbon and marijuana during a
one-night stand. My husband figures it happened the weekend she went to
New York for the first time, to interview for admission to the college.
I mean, that date fits with the birth nine months later. For Emily, a
baby was just a great inconvenience and another element to include in
her great American novel. She simply didn't care about motherhood. No
one in the family meant anything to her. Everything was material for a
book."

"So you don't know
very much about her life after she left you?"

"Only indirectly. My
mother and I talked about Emily a lot. For Mother, the estrangement of
her little girl was the greatest tragedy of her life, of course. My
middle sister and I were the only two people she could cry to about it.
By the time she was able to acknowledge that Emily needed serious
intervention to deal with alcohol and drugs, Emily was already away at
NYU and rejecting everything about our parents' lifestyle. For my part,
the conversations were just a way for me to make sure that she wasn't
coming back."

"And she didn't?"

"She tried only once.
But that was more than twenty years ago, and my husband made it clear
she wasn't welcome. We never heard from her again."

"Her daughter? She
never contacted-"

"My daughter, Miss
Cooper. Amelia is
my
daughter, can you understand that?"

"What exactly can you
tell us about Emily?" Mike asked. "Do you know what she's been working
on lately?"

"Writing, I assume."
It was obviously just a guess.

"Anything specific
that you know of? Anything that could have created a dangerous
situation for her?"

I figured Mike was
thinking of the fact that Teddy Kroon had been searching her computer
for some document or file.

"Both my parents are
dead, Mr. Chapman. There is nothing I can tell you about the last two
years of Emily's life. That door between us was closed."

"Let's start at the
beginning, then," Mike said, his notepad already open and only the
letters
NYU
and a question mark
written on the page. "Do you know whether she finished college?"

"Yes, she graduated. A
year late, I believe, because she was in and out of trouble from the
time she got to New York."

"You mean, problems
with abuse?"

"Well, alcohol, of
course," Sally said, leaning back and resting her hands on the top of
the table. "But then she was also caught shoplifting in a department
store. I-uh, I feel awful talking about all these things, but I'm sure
you can find them in the police records anyway. The case was dismissed,
from what I understand, because it was her first arrest. But then there
was bigger trouble, personally, when she graduated to more
sophisticated drugs like cocaine, according to what mother used to tell
me at the time."

"Where'd she get the
money for these things?" I asked.

Sally Brandon pursed
her lips. "I know you must think I'm terribly hostile, but you're
touching all the right buttons. Mother sent her money. Anything she
thought my father wouldn't miss. Every time Dad gave her money to treat
herself to some little thing that might have made her own life a bit
more pleasant, my mother mailed it to Emily. I didn't know about it for
years or I would have put a stop to it earlier."

"Was your sister ever
in any relationships that she talked about?" Mike asked.

Sally laughed. "I
guess I'd have to paint you a better picture of my father. There was no
one who could have crossed Emily's path who would have been appropriate
to bring into a social conversation at home. It's nothing she would
have raised with my parents."

"So Monty-the name
Monty-that doesn't mean anything to you?"

Sally Brandon thought
for a few seconds and shook her head. "Nothing at all. She lived with
someone for a few months-it was when she was breaking up with him that
she wanted to move back to Michigan, back in with us."

She paused again. "And
then there was that policeman who took an interest in Emily, at least
for a while. I think Mother actually thought he'd be good for her, but
I doubt that it was a serious relationship. I don't believe either of
the men was named Monty but I'm not really sure. I'm not even certain
they were two different people."

Confusion seemed to be
overwhelming Sally Brandon as she struggled to think about things she
had tried to repress for so many years.

"What policeman?"

"He had something to
do with her arrest. I don't know his name, but he actually phoned to
speak with Mother several times. I understood he was attempting to help
Emily straighten herself out. He and that literature teacher of hers
who convinced her to go into rehab the first time. I think they're the
only two men who ever tried to do something good for Emily without
taking advantage of her from the time she was a twelve-year-old child."

Kroon had mentioned a
professor who had encouraged Emily to get into rehab.

"Perhaps my husband
will remember the names. You can call and ask him about it. He was the
one who spoke to Emily the one time she called us for help. You know,
when I said she wanted to come to stay with us for a while?"

Mike took down the
Brandons' home telephone.

"And I'll look in the
apartment for her old manuscripts when I go through her things
tomorrow," Sally Brandon said dismissively. "If it wasn't just another
of Emily's alcohol deliriums, I'm sure she would have written the mad
boyfriend into one of her novels."