Swift Justice (28 page)

“Please let me know if I can help you,” said the voice from the phone.

The woman behind the cash register was wraith thin and dressed in swirling clouds of blue gauze and chiffon. Strawberry blond hair trailed down her back in tiny corkscrew ringlets. A teardrop-shaped amethyst pendant hung from a heavy chain to midchest, and a silver anklet set with bells tinkled when she floated around the counter. She was barefoot. “You must be Charlotte.” She held out a long-fingered hand for me to shake.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“You have a sense of purpose about you,” she said with a smile. Her skin was so translucent a tracery of veins showed at her temples. Not a line marred her face, and I reminded myself she was not yet thirty. “Can I offer you some water or tea?”

I knew the tea was likely to be caffeine-free—why bother?—and probably steeped from twigs and wildflowers picked at the vernal equinox, or some such thing. Water seemed safer.
Larissa disappeared into a back room through a clacking beaded curtain and returned with two bottled waters. “Passion fruit or guava?” she asked, lifting both bottles.

What’s wrong with plain old tap water flavored with chlorine, fluoride, and sediment? I reached for a bottle at random. Perching on the velvet-topped stool she pulled forward, I filled her in on Elizabeth’s death and my reason for wanting to know about Seth Johnson, including his attempt to marry Elizabeth. Larissa listened attentively, her head slightly cocked. Every now and then she reached up a hand and drew her fingers through the silky curtain of her hair.

“Marrying Seth was necessary for me to shed my former self and emerge in my present form,” she said, “but he was not my ultimate destiny.”

She talked like she thought she was a damned butterfly. “Can you tell me why the marriage broke up?”

She considered. “At the ashram, where I went to heal my spirit after the division of our souls, I came to see that Seth had let himself be defined by his inabilities, not his gifts. So sad. Who knows what he could have become if only he was more accepting of the body’s limits.” She gazed out the window at passersby on the street.

“Huh?” She’d completely lost me with her New Age–speak. “In English?”

Her gaze returned to me, her irises such an unusual purple I wondered if she wore contacts. “He was impotent, yet obsessed with having a biological child.”

Aah. “The man’s a geneticist, for heaven’s sake. Surely he considered in vitro?”

She was shaking her head before I finished. “Such manipulations
were against his faith. Are you familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ the Righteous on Earth?”

“Oh, yeah. Elizabeth, the girl who died, was the pastor’s stepdaughter.”

“Pastor Sprouse was single when I married Seth,” Larissa said. “Anyway, the church forbade any kind of medical intervention, especially for procreation. If God didn’t bless you with children naturally, it was probably because you were either unfit to be a parent or because he had other work for you to do.”

“And Seth bought that?”

“Oh, yes. You wouldn’t believe the vile things he had me do to . . . to . . .”

“Help him get it up?”

Larissa’s face became a mask of sadness, and I knew what she’d look like when she was old. “I am still a virgin,” she stated simply. “Since being released from my covenant with Seth, I have discovered that my spirit expands only in the company of women.”

I suspected I knew what she meant and didn’t ask her to translate. “So there’s no way Seth fathered Elizabeth’s baby.”

“None.”

“So why did he want to marry Elizabeth?” I didn’t realize I’d spoken the thought aloud until Larissa answered.

“Hope. I think he chose very young women to marry because we were not quite grown into who we would become and he was able to mold us more easily. When we began to resist, he divorced us, threatened us.”

“Why aren’t you scared of him?” I asked. “His other wife refused to talk to me.”

“He can’t hurt me anymore,” she said. “I refuse to cede him that power. I have no husband or children he can threaten, and the type of people who shop at Twinkle”—she gestured around the tiny store—“have mostly never heard of Seth Johnson. I own the store outright—I bought it with the divorce settlement—so he can’t have me evicted.” A small smile of satisfaction curved her lips. “He is truly impotent here.”

After my talk with Larissa, I was chomping at the bit to have another go at Seth Johnson. Even though it didn’t sound as if he could be Olivia’s father, his visit to Elizabeth at the apartment suggested he knew more than he was telling. I dialed his number from my cell phone, but Secretary Jean took great pleasure in telling me he had left instructions not to put me through or grant me another appointment.

“I suppose he left orders to shoot me on sight if I just show up?”

“Arrest you for trespassing,” Jean said with satisfaction.

I hung up. Drumming my fingernails on the steering wheel as I fought rush hour traffic back to my office, I tried to think of a way to maneuver Johnson into talking to me, but came up empty.

I was in a grumpy mood when I stalked into the office, and the sight of Gigi plugging in a lava lamp with turquoise blobs floating in garish pink ooze almost drove me around the bend.

“No,” I said simply, marching to my desk.

“But I got it on eBay,” she said. “Look, it really brightens the place up, don’t you think?” She stood back to admire the effect.

“No.”

“I suppose Kendall might like it,” she said, unplugging it and wrapping the cord around it. “It’s a bit too pink for Dexter, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.” I grabbed a Pepsi and drank it absently, trying to shake my surly mood. If only I could think of a way to get to Johnson . . .

“You look like you’ve had a hard day,” Gigi said. She leaned forward with her elbows on the desk, good hand cupping her chin. “What’s wrong?”

I almost told her to mind her own business, but couldn’t stand hearing the answer I was sure I’d get: Swift Investigations
was
her business. So I told her about the meeting with Larissa and my frustrated attempts to talk to Johnson again, feeling some relief at venting.

“Well, I know where Seth Johnson’ll be tonight,” she said when I finished.

“What?” I spun my chair to face her directly.

“At the Wild West Casino Night—it’s a benefit for the Fine Arts Center. He’s on the board of directors. So was Les.” Her happy smile dimmed. “I’ve got tickets, if you want to go. We bought them before Les . . .”

“You do?” My grandpa always said it was better to be lucky than good, and right now I believed him. “We could both go.” She wasn’t the ideal date, but they
were
her tickets.

“Thanks, Charlie, but I’ve got to help Dexter with his English term paper tonight. If he doesn’t turn it in tomorrow, he’s going to fail English.”

I knew what “help Dexter” meant: She was going to write the damn thing for him. I felt a niggle of annoyance at the way
her kids took advantage of her. “Well, thanks,” I said. “Maybe I can talk Jack into going. What’s the attire?”

“Festive Western—”

Whatever the hell that was.

“—or period Western costume. You know, like dance hall girls or gunslingers. I was going as a madam—like Miss Kitty in
Gunsmoke
?—and Les had a marshal’s costume.” She sounded wistful. “You could borrow my costume, too,” she said helpfully. “The waist is elastic. I’ll run home and get it and the tickets.”

Before I could tell her I was more a boots and jeans kind of cowgirl than a saloon hostess, she’d bolted. Oh, well. Maybe she’d bring Les’s costume, too, and Jack could play Marshal Dillon.

Gigi wasn’t back yet when I wandered over to Albertine’s to keep my appointment with Jack Van Hoose half an hour later. I found him deep in conversation with my friend. The crowd was scarce on a Wednesday night, and New Orleans jazz playing over the speakers filled the silent spaces. Albertine, clad in a zebra-striped tunic that fell to her knees over black leggings, laughed as I walked in. “Get away with you,” she said, giving Jack a playful push on the shoulder. He grinned.

“I’ll have whatever you guys are having,” I said. A martini glass with less than an inch of green slush remaining sat in front of each of them. I slid onto a bar stool beside Jack.

“One margaritatini coming up,” Albertine said.

“A what?”

“It’s a margarita made with vodka,” Jack said as Albertine
busied herself with bottles. “Without salt.” Wearing a red golf shirt with khaki shorts displaying his strongly muscled legs, he only needed a whistle strung around his neck to pass for a football coach.

Skewering a wedge of lime and a cherry on a tiny plastic sword, Albertine set the drink in front of me. “Voilà!”

I took a cautious sip. Strange, but somehow refreshing. I took two more swallows, then set the glass down on a bar napkin. Albertine wandered off to serve a couple in their sixties who settled in at the end of the bar, and Jack swiveled to face me, his knee brushing mine.

“So, lady detective, how’s your case coming?” A smile tugged at his broad lips.

“So-so,” I said. “I’ve got a couple of possibilities for the father, but no one’s owning up to it or handing over voluntary DNA samples. You told me Elizabeth’s stepdad came to see you once. What kind of vibe did you get from him?”

Jack finished off the dregs of his drink. “Intense. He seemed jittery, edgy, like some of the kids get before a big game . . . on the brink. Only I got the feeling he was always like that. It was almost like he was high on something, PCP or meth, not a drug like marijuana that mellows you out.”

“High on God.”

“Frankly, the way he came off, I’m surprised Elizabeth wasn’t home-schooled.” He signaled Albertine for a glass of water. “Liberty was not much better than an opium den or bordello, to hear him tell it.”

I ran my fingers up and down the stem of my martini glass, putting off the questions I didn’t want to ask. “Did you know Linnea helped deliver Elizabeth’s baby?”

“You’re shitting me!” After a moment’s thought, he nodded. “I guess I can see it. That girl’s got one cool head.”

“She told me she’s going to be an obstetrician. She also told me”—I took a deep breath—“that Elizabeth might have called you after the baby was born. Maybe to ask for advice?” I looked a question at him.

“Me?” He looked genuinely surprised. “Why would she call me?”

“Elizabeth thought you were ‘the bomb,’ according to Linnea. It would be natural for a young girl to turn to a counselor she trusted in a time of crisis,” I said, “especially if, like Elizabeth, she couldn’t count on her parents for help.”

“I wish she had, but she didn’t,” Jack said, a tight look descending on his face. “I hope you’re not implying there was anything improper in my relationship with Elizabeth.”

“I’m not implying anything,” I lied. “Just trying to do my job.”

“Since your job is finding the baby’s father, forgive me if I get a little pissed off here!” He put his glass down with such force that water sloshed over the sides.

Albertine sent us a sideways glance from her position near the cash register.

I kept my voice low. “Look, Jack, I don’t think you’re Olivia’s dad, but I’ve got to cover all the bases. You knew Elizabeth before she became pregnant, and, as far as I can tell, you’re one of very few men she liked and spent time with.”