Singer 02 - Long Time No See (41 page)

On the first half of the plane trip home, I finished the book on Truman I’d been reading, then slept from someplace above Sioux City, Iowa, back to New York. When I got back to the house, there were three messages. One was from Nancy: “I’m assuming you are either schussing down mountains with a dude named Chet or you are back and holed up getting your brains banged out by that cop who will inevitably break your heart, you besotted, romantic fool. In either case, I would appreciate a call just to know how things went.” That meant she was worried, especially after receiving the fax with Samantha’s name and picture on a driver’s license. I called and told her that while I might be besotted, I was not a fool, romantic or otherwise.

“Oh please!” She heaved a vast southern sigh. “You might as well walk around in a jester’s costume. In any case, I have had a thought.”

“‘So rare as a day in June.’ Can you remember what it was?”

“I was thinking about how Courtney or that little mouse person died. Just because they found her in the pool, you get the image of a watery death.”

“But in fact it was a gun,” I remarked.

“Yes, two bullets. The more I thought about it, I remembered an offhand remark either you or I made at the time, that the second shot was for insurance. And I thought—I being a woman of constant cogitation—damn, isn’t that just like everything you’ve told me about Courtney Logan.”

“Which is?”

“Thorough. All the lampshade gewgaws, the bric-a-brac, everything just so. One shot in the head would do it. All right, if you were Fancy Phil or one of his associates, you might think something like: Remember in 1977, how Vinnie the Vulture got shot in the head but was still able to identify his assailant by dribbling his name in spittle. But if I were going to kill someone by shooting them in the head ... Judith, once is enough, especially if you’re going to stick them facedown in water and tie back the pool cover nice and tight.”

“It does go with her personality,” I agreed.

“So following up on that thought, on
Newsday
’s time and money, I called Summit High School in Olympia and thoroughly beguiled the assistant principal. He toddled over to the yearbook office for me and found
The Apex
—isn’t that clever?—for the year Courtney graduated.”

“And?” I demanded.

“Many, many, many activities and honors for our girl, as you can well imagine. Including a rating of Distinguished Expert in the NRA—as in National Rifle Association—Marksmanship Qualification Program. Not that it takes a Distinguished Expert to shoot someone in the head point blank.”

“Not at all.”

“But it does show a certain degree of comfort when it comes to pulling a trigger.”

“Wow. Thank you. I’m really grateful that you—”

“Judith, don’t go effusive on me. There’s more. I could get no satisfaction from the old battle-ax at Emily’s school in Oklahoma. But I called the mother—who was not America’s sweetheart. She did manage to string enough words together to tell me that Emily—and I quote—‘never messed with guns.’”

I recalled Zee Friedman remarking how she’d overheard a one-sided conversation Courtney had a week before she disappeared, in which she’d said, “You promised.” Zee had thought she sounded desperate. Had the caller been Emily and had Emily pushed Courtney too far?

Nancy’s message was followed by two from Nelson. “Just calling to say hi. By the way, I found out something interesting about your hometown girl. Call me at work. If I’m not there, leave a message.” In his second call, his voice gave away his concern by trying to come across as cool: “Hey, hope you’re having a good day. I’m working late, so you can beep me whenever you get in.”

After I beeped him, I took the portable phone, placed it on the edge of the tub, then soaked in a hot bath, usually a fine place for bright ideas to bubble up. But nothing much bubbled. Oh, I’d check the Key Biscayne address to see if it was authentic and if anyone named Samantha R. Corby had lived there and left a forwarding address. And of course I’d give Nelson a copy of the fax so he could, if he wanted to, call or subpoena the Key Biscayne Bank & Trust and see if they had information on Samantha—any other checks she’d written, her balance, and so forth.

I knew that if Courtney had executed the perfect crime, I would never have thought that the body in the pool was anyone but hers. Still, it was a damned good crime, as crimes go. Good enough, because of her thoroughness, to ensure her freedom. Deciding to delete the possibility of a wild-goose chase from my consciousness, I pumiced my feet and wondered how long she’d been planning her escape from marriage. Why couldn’t she have just said “enough” to Greg? Or simply taken a powder?

My guess was maybe that was what she was originally planning. Being the quintessential suburban wife, the perfect mother, after all, had not worked out. Maybe after her final throw pillow there was simply nothing left to buy. Perhaps Greg, with his refusal to try to open Soup Salad Sandwiches on the West Coast, had proven unworthy of her awesome efforts. Possibly she found child-rearing not only draining, but incredibly boring—a conclusion that would inevitably be drawn by someone who could not love.

But Courtney being Courtney, she couldn’t endure failure. Greater New York hadn’t been so great for her. First the knowledge that she’d failed at Patton Giddings, then the realization that being a housewife would bring no applause, no money. The only reward was satisfaction. How could she break free? She could resign from Patton Giddings, or wait to be asked to leave; in either case, she’d be done with them forever.

But even if you quit as a wife, you’re still stuck with an ex-husband, a nuisance almost by definition. And the children! Be rid of them, give over custody to Greg, and you’d still be obliged to return to the scene of your failure to visit them, or worse, have them intrude upon your new life. Not only that: You would have a legal obligation to contribute to their support.

And people would gasp, How
could
she? If she went to Sun Valley or Milwaukee or Beijing as Courtney Bryce Logan, someone from her old life, hearing about her, spotting her, might say to someone in her new life: Do you
know
what that woman did? So she had no choice but to disappear, to be missing. Emily Chavarria could have been part of Courtney’s original scheme or an afterthought, but at some time it became clear that Emily, knowing about the insider trading and who knows what else, could not be allowed to live.

I climbed out of the bath, enveloped in a cloud of freesia, and grabbed a towel. How well could Courtney hide? A magazine article I’d read recently said it was impossible to become a new person through plastic surgery; to some degree you would always be recognizable. Still, I’d passed by several longtime acquaintances around town within the last year or two not recognizing them after what one of them referred to as “a little work.” They’d had to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Judith, it’s
me
.” Karen or Linda or Jean. So who knew?

Nelson’s call caught me in my closet as I was making the cataclysmic decision between white or beige underwear. “Where were you, for Christ’s sake?”

Since I couldn’t come up with a clever response to show him I was very much an independent woman, I told him: “In Sun Valley.”

I chose beige and held the phone about a foot away from my ear as he yelled “What the hell is wrong with you?” while he banged on something several times, hopefully his desk. While Bob almost never shouted, he could hold a grudge longer than the Hatfields and McCoys. If Nelson still had the temper he had years before, it would soon blow over. “What if Courtney had been there?”

“See? You already know she wasn’t,” I pointed out. “Not just because I’m alive. Because we both knew there was at least a ninety-nine percent chance she wouldn’t be. Otherwise, trust me, I wouldn’t have gone.” I told him about the photocopy of Samantha Corby’s check and license I’d gotten from Doreen in Wiggins and about the cold shoulder I’d gotten from both H. and Victor, Samantha’s former neighbors. “Now you,” I said. “You said you found out something interesting.”

“I’ll come over in a while. To pick up that photocopy.” I went back into the drawer, came out with black underwear. Obvious, perhaps, but also effective. “Is that okay?” he asked as I ditched the beige.

“Sure.”

“I’ll tell you what I came up with when I see you.”

It was getting near the summer solstice, so it was still light out when Nelson arrived. I’d already set a couple of citronella torches on the grass around the patio and made sangria with the wine we’d left over a few nights before—once I’d sniffed and determined it wasn’t vinegar. I had just dried my hands after slicing up a peach when he came around the back. “Hi,” he said, and from behind his back brought out a great bouquet of daisies, although I’d seen several of them peeking around his sides. They were beautiful, and we went into the kitchen and spent a few minutes kissing and finding the right vase. By the time we got outside, the daylight had turned softer and more gold, the lovely silkiness that comes to the light before dusk. We wound up sharing a chaise and a glass of sangria. “I’ve been thinking about how to handle this Courtney business,” he said.

“You mean politically, for you.”

“And for you. If anything comes of it, you should get credit from your boyfriend.”

“Fancy, you mean?”

“Fancy. So first let me tell you what I’ve done while you weren’t answering your phone and I didn’t know what ... You should have told me you were going, Judith.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said carefully. “But that’s a subject we can talk about some other time.” I squelched: If you want there to be another time and you’re not here to say good-bye.

“I told you I wasn’t ready to go to the brass on the DNA. But unless I had something concrete, I couldn’t go to them at all.”

“What if I told you I got X rays from Courtney’s dentist here in town?”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“How?”

“My friend Nancy got them. The dentist is a former lover of hers, but then, who isn’t?”

“Not me.” We spent a minute or so sipping Sangria and making out, then went back to the case.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“You mean, what
did
I do. I thought about calling Courtney’s parents out in Washington, making some excuse about needing her dental records for the investigation and not wanting to waste time having to get a subpoena for them.”

“How long does a subpoena take?”

“An investigative subpoena from the DA’s office? A few minutes. But then I thought, no, they already must have a relationship with somebody from Homicide. They might call to check on me. And who knows what kind of a kid Courtney was? Maybe her parents knew bad stuff about her that other people didn’t know. They’d have the presence of mind and the experience to call a lawyer before doing anything.”

“So, what
did
you do?”

“I called Emily Chavarria’s house. Got the father—”

“I hope he’s better than the mother.”

“Sounded like a decent guy who’s been through hell. Anyway, I commiserated with him and told him the last thing I wanted to do was scare him, but if he could get Emily’s Oklahoma dentist to overnight me her records and X rays, it would help rule her out.”

“And?”

“And they got here this morning.”

“And?”

“I brought them over to this great guy at the medical examiner’s office, somebody I’ve known for years, and asked him for an unofficial opinion.” I waited. “Judith, they match the teeth from the body in the Logans’ pool.”

It was only a combination of relief, too many sangria-soaked peach and apple slices, and jet lag, but I gave the glass over to Nelson and closed my eyes, too wiped out to say anything more than “Congratulations.” I heard the clink of the glass as he set it on the patio and rested against him while he stroked my hair, something he’d figured out years earlier to bring me back when I was ready to go over the top. “Now what?” I finally asked.

“Now I’m going to go to the brass, tell them what I’ve found out. I’ll also let them know that I’ve heard whispers about Greg Logan’s lawyer having some questions about the ID of the body. And in case it hasn’t dawned on them, I’m going to tell them very delicately that someone had his head up his ass on this case because no DNA test was ever done.”

“That will make them do it!” I enthused.

“No. Not right away. What that will do is make them wait a day or two—till they figure out how to cover themselves. Or it may make them hem and haw and want to get rid of me. So I’d appreciate it if you’d ... Shit, I hate to do this. But let Fancy Phil know you have some doubts that the body was Courtney’s, that it could be someone else’s who had zero to do with Greg Logan. Trust me, by seven
A.M
. Monday morning, all over Nassau County, you’ll hear the sound of Greg’s lawyer screaming for a DNA test.”

A little later, after I realized that if I made and/or ate dinner I might die of fatigue, I told Nelson to go, that I had to go upstairs. Though I was sure I’d go straight to sleep, this time he walked me upstairs, came into the master bedroom with me, and stayed for an hour. No shade of Bob came to haunt our lovemaking, no shadow of Nelson’s marriage held us back.

“When do you want to talk about us?” he asked before he said good-bye.

“Tomorrow,” I mumbled. “Whenever we both want to.”

“Want to what?” he inquired, in a sensual murmur which usually means: I want to do it again.

Once again I told him good night, sent him home, and slept until the phone rang the next morning. “Is this Judith Singer?” a woman’s voice asked.

I cleared my throat to get the languid sleep hoarseness from my voice. “Yes it is.”

“Hi, my name is Ellen Berman. I live in Garden City. One of my friends in town went to Princeton with Courtney Logan. She heard something about your looking into the case. Anyway, she gave me your number. I really feel funny about doing this. But I worked at Patton Giddings until the end of last year. I knew Courtney. I don’t want to get involved, but I feel—I don’t know, an obligation ...”