Paradise County (37 page)
“Recognize this?” Tommy asked, his eyes fixed on Joe’s face.
Joe looked from the purse to his friend.
“Well, it sure as hell isn’t mine,” he said.
Rob grinned, seeming to relax a little, but Tommy did not. In fact, Tommy’s seriousness was starting to annoy Joe.
“You wanna bottom-line me here? What’s this about?” Joe asked impatiently.
Tommy met his gaze. “There’s ID in the purse,” he said. “A woman’s wallet. Makeup, a hairbrush, miscellaneous other items too, but the ID’s what’s important. Know whose name is on it?”
“No, Tom, I don’t, but I presume sometime in the next day or so you’re going to tell me.”
“It’s Laura’s, Joe. Laura, your wife.”
“What?”
Joe grabbed for the purse, but Tommy was quicker, whisking it up and away from his hands. Joe glared at him. “Let me see.”
Taking care to keep the purse out of Joe’s reach, Tommy opened it and extracted a wallet, then flipped the wallet open to reveal a mottled driver’s license enclosed behind a once-clear plastic shield, and two credit cards still in their slots. As he dangled it in front of Joe’s face, Joe grabbed it.
“Hey!” Tommy protested. “You’ll get fingerprints all over it!”
“Shouldn’t matter. Everything’s already been checked for prints, you said. If they need to go over the wallet again, then we’ll just stipulate that any newly recovered prints are the results of this,” Rob put in as Joe glared at Tommy, then looked closely at the driver’s license. Laura’s face looked back at him through the scratched plastic.
“It’s Laura’s,” he confirmed, handing the wallet back to Tommy. “So what’s your point?”
“What’s my point?” Tommy looked at him like he was mentally defective. “Joe, where
is
Laura?”
“How the hell should I know? We’re divorced, remember? I haven’t seen or heard from her in years.”
“Did you ever file a missing-persons report on her?”
Joe stared at him. “Why would I do that? First of all, I don’t know that she
is
missing. She could be living the high life down in some place like Mexico for all I know. Second of all,
I
don’t want to find her. The kids and I are better off with her out of our lives, and you know it as well as I do.”
“Okay, Joe, shut up now,” Rob intervened.
“What?
Have you guys lost your minds? So you found an old purse of Laura’s! What’s the big deal?”
Rob looked at Tommy. “Look, it’s as plain as the nose on your face that he doesn’t know anything. He’s not that good an actor. Remember
Cinderella?”
Cinderella
had been the sixth-grade play. Chosen for the role of Prince Charming because he was the only boy then taller than the leading lady, Joe had been stricken with stage fright on opening night and had stood
there in the spotlight like he’d been turned to stone, every line he’d so painstakingly memorized going out of his head forever. The girl lead—Cindy Webber (Harrison now)—had had to drag him into position and whisper his lines to him for him to parrot back before responding with her own.
It had been his first and last foray into drama, but he knew that, among his friends, former classmates, and fellow citizens, it would never be forgotten.
“Go to hell,” Joe said to Rob without any particular heat.
Tommy glanced from Rob to Joe, and nodded. “You’re right. He’s not that good an actor. Okay, Joe, sit down and let me tell you what’s happened here.”
“I don’t want to sit down.” Joe wasn’t feeling particularly happy with his old friend Tommy at the moment.
“Fine, then. Don’t.” Tommy glared at him. “This bag, containing Laura’s purse and a pair of size-eight narrow high-heeled shoes—Laura wore size-eight narrow, didn’t she?—was found on Bob Toler’s farm this morning, washed up out of the creek. He was cleaning up his bottomland where it flooded after Saturday night’s rain when he found this, and called me.”
“How do you know what size shoe my ex-wife wore?” Joe fixed Tommy with a narrow-eyed stare.
“Hell, I dated her, too, Joe. Everybody at Shelby County High did. I told you so before you married her.”
“Okay, guys, let’s not get into ancient history here,” Rob intervened hastily. “Joe, there’s more. Tommy, would you just tell him?”
“A little bit farther down in the same field, Mr. Toler found another plastic bag containing possible human remains. Bones, some hair, that kind of thing. That bag’s on its way to the state crime lab now. I’ll be sending this bag, with the purse and shoes, along after it. I kind of suspect the black stains on the purse may turn out to be blood.”
Joe stared at Tommy as the full sense of what he was saying began to percolate through his brain. His knees felt weak suddenly, and his stomach began to churn.
“I think I will sit down,” he said, pulling the chair Rob had vacated closer, and suited the action to the words.
“Told you,” Tommy muttered.
“You think the remains—and the blood—are Laura’s?” Joe took a deep breath.
“I’d say it’s a good possibility, given that the garbage bag is identical to the one we found her purse and shoes in. Joe, there was money in that purse—a hundred thirty-two dollars. And an unused plane ticket to California for a flight that left in June 1991. That makes it seem highly unlikely that she just put her purse in a garbage bag and decided to throw it and her shoes away. When did you last see Laura?”
“Don’t answer that, Joe,” Rob said swiftly.
“Jesus Christ, Tommy, you brought me in here and asked me those questions because you think I killed her!” Joe shot to his feet in outrage.
“Watch your mouth, Joe,” Rob’s warning was urgent.
“Shut the hell up, Rob,” Tommy said irritably. “Joe, I don’t think you killed her. I admit, when I first started looking at this, given everything I know about your and Laura’s history and how she was with the kids and everything, the thought that you
might
have killed her occurred to me. Hell, if I’d been married to her I might have killed her myself. But I can see that you don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’, so just get that look off your face. I’m not charging you with anything, and I don’t suspect you of anything anymore either. Now I just want to know what you know, so maybe we can find out who did do this.”
“If
indeed anything was done,” Rob put in. “At this point, Tommy, all you have is an old purse of Laura’s with dark stains on it and a pair of shoes in a garbage bag. There’s nothing criminal about throwing away a purse and shoes. The remains—if they are indeed human remains, which we don’t know at this point—may have no connection to Laura at all.”
“That’s true,” Tommy said. Then he looked at Joe again. “So when was the last time you saw Laura?”
I
t’s really hard not having a mother, you know,” Jenny said seriously as she, Alex, Neely, and Neely’s friend Samantha Lewis, a tall, thin girl with long, straight, caramel-colored hair, drove back toward Simpsonville. It was a bright, sunny day, warm enough so that no coats were needed. The shopping trip to Louisville had been both successful and fun. Bags full of purchases, including a lovely sky-blue dress for Jenny with long, tight sleeves, a puckered spandex top, and a short full skirt, crowded the trunk. It was now almost five o’clock, and traffic on two-lane U.S. 60 was surprisingly heavy. Alex glanced at Jenny, who was seated in the backseat with Samantha, through the rearview mirror. Jenny’s soft brown eyes sparkled and her cheeks were flushed, and she looked as pretty as Alex had ever seen her.
Trust shopping to bring out the female in a girl!
“Tell me about it,” said Neely, who was turned sideways in the seat so that she could talk to the occupants in back.
Jenny frowned. “Don’t you have a mother either?”
Neely shook her head. “Mine died when I was little. I don’t remember much about her.”
“I don’t remember
anything
about mine,” Jenny said.
“Is she dead?” That came from Samantha, who had a perfectly good mother. Alex knew, because she had talked to her on the phone just to make sure that the girls, as well as the rest of the students of Shelby County High, were really supposed to spend the night in the school after the pep rally. Under teacher supervision, of course. It was called a lock-in, and they did it every year, Mrs. Lewis assured her.
Not that Alex didn’t trust Neely, but it was always safer to check.
“No. I don’t think so. She just took off years ago and left us with Dad. They’re divorced.” Jenny’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Divorce sucks.”
“My parents were divorced,” Alex put in. “It’s tough, I know.”
“Who did you end up with, your dad or your mom?” Jenny asked curiously.
“Actually, neither. I ended up in boarding school.” Alex smiled a little ruefully. “Where I pretty much stayed until I grew up.”
“Boarding school sucks,” Neely chimed in, looking at Jenny. “If you look at it that way, you’re pretty lucky. At least your dad wants you.”
As she heard that, Alex felt a pang, and glanced sideways at her sister. But addressing that issue again would have to wait until they were alone.
Jenny and Samantha returned to Whistledown with them. Leaving the girls to amuse themselves, Alex went upstairs to take a shower, stopped by her makeshift darkroom to check on some film she had in the fixer, then headed back downstairs to the library to check the answering machine. Hannibal tailed her, waiting patiently outside the darkroom and then following her into the library. He jumped up onto the mantel and crouched there between the gaudy china parrots, staring at her.
“Shoo!” Alex tried. She could have sworn he curled his lip at her. Certainly he didn’t budge.
Even Poe’s fictional human counterpart in
The Raven
could not have been so cursed, Alex thought, ignoring the cat’s unblinking regard as best she could. Andrea had called, and, settling down behind the desk, she reached for the phone. As she dialed, her gaze wandered around the room. She’d searched the desk, the bookshelves, even leafed through the books themselves for something, anything, that might help explain her father’s state of mind in the days and hours before he died. Although her gut feeling
was that he had not killed himself, there was always the possibility that she was wrong. If he had known these allegations about bribing public officials were coming, maybe he’d been pushed over the brink. Maybe he was guilty; maybe he hadn’t been able to stand the idea of possibly facing trial, or even going to jail. But if he
had
turned to suicide as the only way out, surely he would have left behind a note for her, or Neely, or Mercedes, or the other principals in his company—some sort of written explanation for somebody. But no note of any sort had been found. Nothing like that had been found.
That
was what made it so impossible for her to believe. Even if he had been in extremis, he wouldn’t have left them without a word.
Would he?
If some sort of message existed, she was pretty sure it would be somewhere in this room. This was the room in which he would have spent most of his time during the last days and hours of his life. But where? Where?
Andrea answered the phone just then, interrupting her thoughts.
“Are you doing all right?” Andrea asked.
“I’m fine.” Amazingly enough, Alex thought, it was true. She was growing stronger by the day.
“I saw Paul at a party the other night, with Tara,” Andrea said. “He didn’t look all that happy. She was all over him like grass on a lawn, and he kept coming up with excuses to get away from her.” Andrea giggled. “I never saw a man make so many excuses to go to the bathroom.”
“I am so over Paul,” Alex said. “I don’t even care. Believe it or not, I hope he’s happy. Well, all right, I don’t actually
hope
he’s happy. But it won’t make me sick if he is.”
They both laughed.
“Oh, good news. The last of the
House of Haywood
articles ran today. And the mayor fired the police chief, which created a whole new scandal. Give it another week, and you should be able to come home.”
“That is good news,” Alex said, and immediately thought of Joe. She wasn’t ready to leave just yet, she realized as she finished her conversation with Andrea and hung up. There was so much sexual chemistry between them—how could she just walk away from it? They had barely scratched the surface… .
Remembering last night, she smiled almost grimly to herself. Just the touch of his mouth on her hand had made her burn. Thinking of how they were in bed together was enough to make any sexual fantasy she’d ever had seem lame.
Never in her life had she wanted a man the way she wanted him. She had a feeling that the kind of physical combustion that existed between them was rare. Maybe so rare that it would never come along for her again.
She liked him too, and respected him. But more than that, he made her feel safe.
Was she just going to get on an airplane and fly away from all that?
Pondering, Alex walked into the kitchen, Hannibal trailing at her heels. Neely was sitting on one of the barstools, her elbows on the island counter, a half-eaten apple in front of her. Samantha was standing behind her, twisting thin strands of Neely’s blond hair into long spirals and then spraying them with hot pink dye. Hannibal immediately jumped up on the counter and butted Neely’s arm with his head, asking to be rubbed. She complied. The cat’s purr sounded like a buzz saw.
