Pride v. Prejudice (29 page)

“Calm down. It was a long time ago, and you did everything you could. We need to find Tricia's apartment.” I spotted a
B
on one of the buildings and parked as close as I could. “Look at this photocopy of her driver's license. Is there anything familiar about her?”

He was still breathing heavily as he took the paper. “I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. She looks like someone is tossing a grenade at her.”

“The DMV camera is programmed to capture that expression. If I'm right about Tricia, you haven't seen her in forty years. Her car's parked over there, so she's home. Try to be inconspicuous, okay?”

“As I get out of a silver Jaguar that costs eighty grand? People are already staring.”

“See if there are sunglasses in the glove compartment,” I said.

“That'll fool 'em.”

I put the car keys in my purse and opened the car door. Roderick was wearing a pair of Luanne's designer sunglasses when he came around to the front of the car. It was not an effective disguise. He kept his face lowered as we climbed the exterior staircase and walked along the balcony to Tricia's apartment. Two boys with their feet on a cooler blocked our way but politely moved their feet.

“Whassup?” one of them said without interest. The other was too busy chugging a beer to ask much of anything.

“Yo, dudes,” muttered Roderick.

I knocked on Tricia's door, waited a minute, and knocked again. “She has to be here,” I said. “I'm sure that's her car.”

“She could be out by the pool,” he suggested, looking over the rims of the sunglasses at the fifty or so students surrounding it.

“She has short silver hair. I don't see her. She's not fond of her neighbors, so she wouldn't be partying with them. Poisoning the water in the pool or stalking them with an assault weapon is—” I stared more carefully at the partygoers, then leapt behind Roderick and said in a low, urgent voice, “Give me the sunglasses.”

He held them over his shoulder. “What's going on, Claire?”

“I thought I saw Frank Norton cuddling up with the brunette in the orange bikini. Could this be a setup?”

“Who's Norton?”

I muttered an expletive as I peeked around his arm. “He's a deputy in the sheriff's department. He's been popping up at inconvenient times and places for the last three days. He must be following me.”

“He's damn quick if he is,” Roderick said. “In the time it took us to walk up the stairs, he changed into his swimming trunks, dashed to the pool, and picked up a hot girl. Did his badge come with superpowers?”

“It didn't even come with average powers. I don't see him now, so I guess I was mistaken. Tuck's paranoia must be contagious.” I banged my fist on the door and shouted, “Tricia!”

“She may not want to talk to you.”

“Then she's out of luck.” This time I banged like a jackhammer ripping through concrete. I noticed that the two beer drinkers were watching us, and smiled at them. “Have you seen Tricia Yates this afternoon?”

The more talkative one said, “I saw her go inside when we went out for food at about one. Haven't seen her since then, but we don't exactly hang out together.”

“Hell no,” mumbled his cohort. “Be like getting drunk with my grandmother.”

During the exchange, Roderick had nudged me away from the door. “It's not locked,” he whispered. “Now what?”

The two boys continued to watch us. They may not have been physics or math majors, but they might find our behavior suspicious if we simply opened the door and went inside. I turned my head and looked intently at the door. “It's Claire and … Oliver, Tricia. Sure, we'd love to have some iced tea.” I looked at Roderick. “She says she was in the shower and has to get dressed, but wants us come on in.”

I grabbed Roderick's arm and pulled him inside the apartment. “For a prison escapee, you're not very quick-witted. Haven't you ever had to improvise?” Without waiting for a rebuttal, I called Tricia's name. There was no response. With the blinds closed, the living room was as shadowy as a basement. There were liquor bottles on the counter of the kitchenette and pans haphazardly piled in the sink. A card table supported a computer and piles of books and papers. The door to the bathroom was open; the square footage inside it was minimal.

“Creepy,” Roderick said in a low voice. “I'm expecting someone or something to leap out at us.”

“Try not to swoon.” I moved cautiously toward the bedroom door. “Tricia, it's okay. I just want to ask you a few questions. There's no reason to hide. I'm not going to leave until we talk, and I mean it. Please don't make me search for you.”

I pushed open the door—and clamped my hand across my mouth to muffle a hysterical squeal. Tricia was draped across the bed, a large knife protruding from her chest. Her shirt and the bedspread were soaked in blood. Her eyes were open, glazed and unseeing. I backed out of the doorway and stumbled to the nearest seat. “She's dead,” I said hoarsely.

Roderick took a quick look. “Oh, yeah. Not cool. Not cool at all. Let's get out of here fast.” He retreated so quickly that he tripped over a footstool and fell backward in a tangle of arms and legs.

I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths to fight off a wave of nausea. I concentrated on an image of my handsome husband's face, his molasses eyes gazing into mine, his hand on my shoulder, his forehead creased as he opened his mouth to lecture me about my rashness and inflated sense of civic duty. He was in the middle of pointing out that I could face prison when I erased him with one fell swoop of my equally imaginary eraser.

“Stop wiggling on the floor and find a place to sit,” I said sternly. “We don't have time to panic. If you want to grab a liquor bottle, I won't object. This is beyond not cool. This is very, very bad.” The last three words seemed to echo in the room.

Roderick got to his feet and went to the counter. A minute later he put a glass in my hand. “Drink this. We can't go racing out the door without those college boys noticing us. As implausible as it may be, they might decide to investigate. If the door's unlocked, they find the body. If the door's locked, they get suspicious and call the manager, who finds the body. We're screwed either way. They'll claim the woman was alive when we arrived because you spoke to her through the door.”

“Why would I kill her? I don't have a wisp of a motive.” I took a swallow of something that scalded my throat. Tricia's budget had precluded all but the cheapest brands of booze, obviously. This was not the opportune moment to complain to the ma
î
tre d'. “We have to think. Go take a careful look at her face and decide whether or not she might have been one of the SAC demonstrators.”

“Shouldn't I make some gingersnaps first?”

“Funny, Roderick. Go see if you recognize her.” I forced down another swallow of 90 proof swamp water. I couldn't tell if it was marketed as wine or whiskey.

He puckered his lips and glared at me as if I'd snatched away his favorite toy. “All right, but I'm doing this under protest. You've made up this fantasy about her. She was likely to be whoever she said she was, an old lady working as a church secretary and plotting to burn down the church if she had the chance. What are we going to do when I don't recognize her?”

“Stop stalling.”

“I'm not stalling,” he said huffily. “I'm merely considering the possibility that you're wrong. Has no one ever done that before?”

I aimed my finger at him. “You are the most cowardly killer I've ever met. You shot an undercover FBI agent, and later escaped from prison. Now I feel as though I should hold your hand while you determine if you've ever met the woman. For pity's sake, didn't they teach you anything at Folsom Prison? Did you guys sit around all day and sing Johnny Cash songs?” I could hear the pitch of my voice rising to a height perilous to fine crystal. I forced down another mouthful of whatever it was. “Sorry, I'm a little bit upset. Please look at her, Roderick. Once you've done that, we'll have to figure out what to do. This may be the only place the FBI isn't watching, but I'm not willing to hide out here.”

He went into the bedroom. I walked to the counter and put down my glass before my brain turned to 90 proof sludge. The refrigerator contained condiments, leftovers covered in plastic wrap, limp lettuce, and an empty pickle jar. I opened a cabinet and stepped back as tiny moths fluttered out. I was picking at a dried fleck on the stovetop when Roderick returned to the living room.

“I'm pretty sure that's Laura. I don't remember her last name, but she was one of the five who made it out of the student union and disappeared,” he said, shaking his head. “This is too weird. Everybody was supposed to stay underground and never have any contact. Sarah and Tuck moved here, followed by Laura and me. It's like we scheduled a fortieth class reunion in Farberville. Maybe the entire membership's here, posing as librarians and mechanics.” He sank down in a chair. “Or the FBI set up a sting to bring us together. All the artful clues on Facebook were posted by a dweeb in a cubicle at Quantico.”

I would have congratulated myself on my keen observation, had Tricia not been dead in the next room. “She hasn't gone into rigor mortis yet, which means she can't have been killed more than two or three hours ago. I saw her leave the church at half past twelve. What time is it?”

“I'd guess around six o'clock,” Roderick said from behind the counter. “Any chance it was suicide?”

“Not a Popsicle's chance in hell. If she'd slit her wrists or her carotid artery, maybe. Samurai warriors reputedly fell on their swords, but it takes single-minded strength to plunge a knife through one's rib cage. Our credibility may not be high, but we can alibi each other. Sarah can't be accused of this, although the Weasel would love to pin it on her. It wasn't a perverted love triangle. You were having an affair with Sarah, and Tuck was having an affair with Tricia. The four of you should have sat down and had a civilized conversation about new arrangements. The house has two bedrooms, after all. If that wasn't acceptable, you'd flip a coin.”

“Except Tuck had other ideas, so she killed him.”

“That's possible,” I said, “but impossible to prove. I'm pretty sure that Tuck and Tricia met that night. He might have told her that he'd decided to turn himself in so he could see his family before he died of whatever disease he thought he had. Tricia was either heartbroken or terrified she might be caught.” I rubbed my temples while I tried to concoct a feasible scenario that put them in the barn with the shotgun. “Tuck lied about the fishing trip so he could catch the two of you together. If he followed Sarah when she left the diner, he would have seen her go to the motel. It was reasonable to assume she would stay there all night. He went home for his scheduled tryst with Tricia.”

“Who convinced him to take his shotgun out to the barn? That's not my idea of foreplay,” Roderick said as he took a swig from a bottle. “Yuck. Pretend I never said that. Maybe he planned to hide in the barn until Sarah showed up the next morning. When Tricia—a.k.a. Laura—showed up, he beckoned her in there.”

“The timing's messed up. Tricia was back with the campers at eleven, and the neighbors are certain they heard the shotgun at midnight.” I went to the window and peeked between the slats of the blinds. There were no vehicles from the sheriff's department forming a barricade in the parking lot. If the feds were out there, they were lurking with admirable professionalism. I reminded myself that my car was at Miss Poppoy's house. By now, Roderick's van would have been pulled out of the pond and towed to a fenced compound so the forensics squad could examine every slimy inch of it. Luanne's car wasn't nondescript by any means, but I wouldn't have gotten this far if the FBI was monitoring her phone calls.

“So what do we do?” asked Roderick. “This place is giving me hives. How long do you plan to stay here?”

I spun around. “You were in prison. Did I miss the part about the electroshock therapy that turned you into Mary's little lamb? For pity's sake, stop whining and help me think. We can't stay here indefinitely, but I don't want to tempt fate by driving around town. Traffic cops love to hassle people in luxury cars. Want to speculate on what will happen if I have to show my driver's license? What are the odds the police officer will tell you to run along while he handcuffs the felonious Ms. Malloy?”

“I didn't kill the undercover FBI agent. It was an accident.”

“I don't have time to hear about your avowed innocence,” I said, as angry at myself as I was at him. Perspiration was forming on my face and back, and my armpits were damp. My stomach was calmer, but my mind was buzzing like an enraged hornet, zigzagging from one unanswerable question to another. “Did you call Evan Toffle's office and tip him off about the motel?”

“No,” he said. “It's the kind of place that doesn't waste money on maid service. My fingerprints are likely to still be there after a year. My DNA could be on the sheets. Who did call? The only person who knew we were there was Tuck, if our theory's right.”

“And he was dead within hours. The only person he could have told was Tricia when they met that night. She suddenly decided to tell Evan, and she was dead within hours, too. That's an extraordinary coincidence.”

“Did she have any close friends that she might have told?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea. See if you can access her e-mail while I try to find her address book.” The clutter was daunting, especially in the dimness. I turned on a lamp and tackled one of the piles on the card table. Roderick fiddled with the keyboard. The computer screen lit up in a promising way. I moved a stack of notebooks and correspondence to the coffee table and examined it. All the unopened envelopes contained bills. A bank statement showed a balance of less than five hundred dollars. Her dentist had sent a reminder that she was overdue for a visit. A card with a depiction of balloons and confetti was an invitation to a baby shower on North Anger Road. Tricia was missing it.