The Mirror and the Mask (25 page)

“Why?”

“I have a few more questions I need to ask you.”

“Can't we do it over the phone?”

“No, afraid not.” Sterling gave him the street address, which Kristjan wrote on the edge of yesterday's
USA Today
. “Has something happened?”

“Susan Bowman's death has officially been ruled a homicide.”

The word ricocheted inside Kristjan's head like an echo off a canyon wall. “Do you have a suspect?”

“We have several. I'll see you at three, Mr. Robbe.”

 

 

 

I
've got the money,” said Jack, keeping his voice down. He kept glancing over Annie's shoulder, nodding to the mourners as they streamed down the winding paths from the parking lot.

Some days were like feature films inside Annie's head, with the past unwinding like a movie reel. She remembered her mother's funeral—if you could call it that. Just a few words spoken when she and Johnny had been left alone with the urn. Annie's eyes had been dry. So had Johnny's. The memory of that day was a wound, one that had never healed.

“Something wrong?” asked Jack.

“Do you have it all?”

“I have what you asked for.” Moving in closer, he added, “We need to set a time when we can meet.”

“Just name it.”

“Tomorrow morning. At the same coffeehouse where we met last time. You haven't said anything to anyone? About me?”

“What do you think?”

“Good girl.”

“I'm not a girl. And there's one other condition I didn't mention before.” She stopped, waited until he looked at her. “Tell me what you did with Sunny. No bullshit. I won't leave until she's found.”

He gazed at her stonily. “I didn't
do
anything with her. I've got two PIs out looking for her. What more do you want? She'll turn up. She's just high-strung, and . . . scared.”

“She knows something you don't want her to talk to the police about. Something you did. That's it, right? You're hiding her.”

“You're determined to think the worst of me. You want to believe I'm capable of murder. Well, I'm not. Now get the hell out of my face. The priest's here.”

Curt stood at the head of the coffin, staring fixedly at the spray of white lilies. When Annie moved up next to him, he took hold of her hand and leaned close to her ear. “What were you and Jack talking about?”

“You,” she said, hoping to stanch the flow of questions.

“Is he hustling you?”

“Oh, stick a cork in it. You think everyone's hustling me. You're delusional, you know that?”

As the graveside service began, Annie's eyes drifted over the crowd. She quickly spotted Jane standing next to an unusually tall, wide woman in a red cape. Annie had been hoping that Jane would change her mind and decide not to show. But no such luck. Jane's eyes remained on her throughout the service. It left her feeling off balance, exposed.

Annie had made the same mistake last night with Jane that she'd made many years ago with an important man. She told the truth. Up until that time, she thought she might actually marry this guy, a grad student, several years older, poor but full of plans for their future. Before meeting Jane, he'd been the kindest, most giving person she'd ever known. He'd been her port in the storm. He believed in
her, even when she didn't believe in herself. She felt she owed him the truth. But as soon as she told him about Johnny, about what she'd done for him, and then about the years of prostitution, his feelings changed. He began to pull away. They had sex only once after her night of truth telling, and it had been so awful Annie had left his apartment and never gone back. Quickly, inexorably, he'd removed himself from her life. Just as Jane would. Annie wasn't about to stick around and watch it happen. Tomorrow morning, when she was supposed to be meeting with Jack, she'd be spilling everything she knew to the police.

And then, just as Johnny had done twelve years ago, she'd vanish.

 

By twelve thirty, most of the crowd had moved to Jack's house. This was the first time Jane had been inside. With so much glass, almost every room commanded a magnificent view of the St. Croix River valley.

“I suppose,” said Cordelia, giving Jane a minitour of the place, “that you filled Nolan in on everything you learned about Annie.”

“I got a lecture on the perils of becoming personally involved.”

“That way lies madness?”

“I believe he used the term ‘psych ward.' ”

“Piffle.”

They entered the great room off the dining room. Kilim rugs covered the dark wood floors. Adding to the sense of lively, almost riotous color were antique Deruta jugs and plates, which were scattered around like confetti.

Standing next to a potted ficus tree, Cordelia told Jane, sotto voce, that she couldn't believe how badly she'd misjudged Jack. “I'm usually such an excellent judge of character.”

By what Escherian leap of logic she'd come up with that conclusion, Jane would never know. On the drive to the cemetery, she'd filled Cordelia in on everything she'd learned in the last couple of days.

“But,
Sunny
,” continued Cordelia, her eyes pulsing. “I thought for sure she'd show up today at the funeral. This is just appalling.”

The only person Jane had recognized back at the cemetery, other than family, was Kristjan Robbe. She'd found a picture of him on the Northland Realty site. He was handsome in a pale, blond, Scandinavian sort of way. He'd stood apart and alone, his back to an oak, a good twenty feet from the rest of the mourners. The news of his affair with Susan was undoubtedly an open secret within the assemblage. He was an outcast and knew it. He hadn't come back to the house.

Cordelia walked Jane over to the stairway where Susan had died. Jane counted twenty-two steps. A long way to fall. The treads were made of textured, red-tile colored concrete, a hard surface for soft flesh to crash against.

When Cordelia was cornered by a man from the St. Paul Theater Guild, Jane drifted off, glad to be on her own. She'd seen Annie only once, when she'd gone into the dining room in search of food. Curt had been standing with his arm around her. The arm was probably a protective gesture, and yet to Jane it smacked of ownership. They were talking to the priest who'd performed the graveside service and a woman in an ankle-length tartan skirt. The woman held a crystal tumbler, sipping from it between slurred outbursts. Under other circumstances, Jane might have tried to stick around to overhear the conversation, but seeing Annie and Curt together turned her stomach.

On her way upstairs a few minutes later, she met Annie coming down. They were both alone. Annie was about to pass Jane without saying a word when Jane stopped her.

“Just give me a minute.”

“There's nothing to say.”

“I want to apologize. You owe me that much.”

Annie looked around, seeming to think it over. She motioned for Jane to follow her. They ended up in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

“Make it quick. I need to get back to Curt.”

“I want to apologize. I was way too pushy last night.”

“Fine. Apology accepted.”

“You're still angry.”

“I am
not
angry.”

“What did I do that was so awful?”

Annie focused her eyes everywhere but on Jane. “You made me care about you. You gave me the impression that it would be okay if I told you the truth.”

“I'm not judging you, you are.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Annie, look at me. What you said changes nothing.”

“You may not think it does, but it will. I'm damaged goods. A hooker. A whore. You and all your money and all your fancy restaurants—you've got no clue what it's like to live in my world.”

“You're right,” said Jane, her voice softening. “I don't. But I know what I see. And what I see is a good woman who refuses to forgive herself.”

Annie stared straight ahead. “I tell people the truth and they go away.”

“That won't happen with me. I promise, I'm not going anywhere.”

“You don't know how much I'd like to believe that.”

“Then do. I thought we . . . connected the other night. That it meant something.”

“It did mean something, but so what? Connecting is easy. The hard part is what happens inside here.” She pointed at her head.

Jane felt a wave of tenderness. “I don't want to leave it like this.”

“I'm not staying in Minnesota. I'm heading home tomorrow.”

“I'm glad to hear it. You're not safe here. I just wish—”

Annie stepped closer. “You don't hate me? Truly?”

“I could never hate you.”

Closing her eyes, Jane felt Annie's hair fall softly across her face.

“I want to be with you,” she whispered. “Just once.”

“I want that, too.”

The moment seemed to wrap itself around them, leaving them suspended, not quite anywhere except with each other.

“Will you be home later this afternoon?” whispered Annie, her fingers tracing the outline of Jane's cheek.

“What the hell's going on in here?” came a stern voice. Curt stood in the doorway, his hands drawn into fists.

Jane's surprise quickly turned to fury that he could make such an important moment vanish into his anger.

“This is great. Just fabulous.” With an abruptness that punctuated his disgust, he turned and steamed off down the hall.

“I'll call before I come,” said Annie, giving Jane's hand a squeeze. Without another word, she ran after him.

It took a full minute for the crushed feeling in Jane's stomach to go away. She didn't know what Curt's connection to Annie was, but it was enough to make her rush after him. Jane was able to subdue her concern only by telling herself that Curt wasn't dangerous, just mad as hell.

On Jane's way to the stairs, the woman in the long tartan skirt passed in front of her and stumbled into an open doorway. “Out of my way,” she mumbled.

The sound of crashing glass drew Jane into the room right behind her. The woman teetered by the bed, holding a bottle of Beefeater gin. Across the room, large chunks of a crystal tumbler littered the floor.

“My glass broke,” she said matter-of-factly.

“I see that,” said Jane, watching her sway and sink backward onto a yellow satin duvet.

“Nobody listens to me,” she muttered, trying to straighten her frilly white blouse.

“Listens about what?”

The woman eyed her. “You're that friend of Susan's, right? The one she went golfin' with every week. Can't remember your name.”

“Jane.”

“Right. Jane,” she slurred.

“And you are?”

“You know me,” she said. “Grace Lee Ingersol, Susan's older sister from Fort Worth.”

“Oh, sure,” said Jane. “I remember you now.” She recognized a gift when she saw one. “I'm happy to listen to anything you have to say.”

“You are?” Grace looked around aimlessly. “Shoot, where's my glass?”

“I think it broke.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, hell.” She took a slug straight from the bottle. With her head wobbling from side to side, she continued, “My sister was murdered.”

“I was told the death was ruled suspicious.”

“Uh-uh. Jack got word this mornin'. It was murder, all right.”

Jane took a seat on an upholstered bench just inside the door. “Really.”

“Yup. And I know who did it.” The alcohol mixed with the Texas accent made her words almost unintelligible.

“Who?”

She pawed at the collar of her blouse. “This family is in crisis. We got to find poor Sunny.”

“I agree,” said Jane. “Do you know what happened to her?”

Grace teared up. “It's that boy. It has always,
always
been that sorry boy. When they were young . . . they were like my own.”

“Curt and Sunny.”

“Yes, Curt and Sunny,” she snapped. “You're kinda dim.” With the glacial concentration of the truly blitzed, Grace leveled her gaze at Jane. “I know what's been goin' on around here. I wanted to tell that
priest a few minutes ago, but how could I with Curt standin' there givin' me the evil eye?” She swayed forward. “Anybody ever tell you you got a big nose?”

“I've heard that.”

“Well.” She brushed a piece of lint off her skirt. “I believe I shall lie down for a while.”

“First tell me who murdered Susan.”

“I already did. Find me a quilt. Or a blanket. I don't know how anybody lives in a place this cold.”

Jane opened a closet door. Two wool blankets were stored on a top shelf. She pulled one down. When she turned around, Grace was lying flat on the bed, arms flung out, eyes closed.

“It's all there in the court records,” she muttered, letting go of the gin bottle. It teetered on the mattress until Jane grabbed it just before it fell over.