“There’s been a murder. A young, handsome social worker found dead in his hotel room after a wedding. Simply awful. Julie looked it up on her smartphone and showed me his photograph. Such potential, just lost.”
Joyce hadn’t allowed herself to read or watch the news related to the case yet. She knew once she saw him in the “before” pictures they always used in news reports on violent crimes, healthy and smiling, there’d be no turning back from the path she was on.
Mamie continued. “And it seems that this Catriona was the last person to see him alive. They’d met at the wedding. Apparently she’s developed the habit of going to weddings to pick up men for the night. It’s all rather sad.”
Joyce had also forgotten Mamie’s penchant for understatement.
“Why did they come to my home, then?” Joyce asked.
“Well, from my understanding, Julie said they’re interviewing all of Catriona’s recent contacts. They can access phone records remotely, check emails. Societal media accounts.” Mamie corrected herself. “Social media, I mean. Such a strange phenomenon that is. Everyone putting their private lives online until they forget it isn’t private anymore.” She shook her head.
Joyce glanced at her watch, not really reading the time.
“Thank you so much for the tea, Mamie, but I really must be going.”
“I remember the days of committee work.” Mamie stood up. “From breakfast to brunch to lunch and barely home in time to change for dinner. It’s a wonder I stayed so slim, isn’t it?”
“You always look lovely.” Joyce bent to kiss both of Mamie’s cheeks. As she did, Mamie reached up and gently held Joyce’s right wrist.
“Don’t let them see you sweat,” she told her, her blue eyes intense and clear. “Men only think they run the world.” And with that, she let go. “Goodbye, Joyce. Come anytime.”
Joyce showed herself out, giving a curt nod to the butler who offered her coat and bag.
As she got into the Jag, she tapped a new address into her phone and let the route snake its way along the screen. It would take thirty minutes to get to the Summitville police station. That gave her plenty of time to figure out what she was going to say.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN LAURA
Terry was prowling around the kitchen when Laura got home from work.
“Why isn’t there ever any creamer in this house?” He rummaged around the tin canisters on the counter, which were empty except for the very back one, where Laura kept an emergency pack of cigarettes, condoms, and a small roll of money hidden in an empty tampon box just in case.
Laura wearily pulled out a carton from the shopping bags in her hand. “I picked some up on my way home.”
Her car was running on fumes, but they needed groceries. Payday wasn’t until Friday, and it was only Tuesday. She’d had to drain her checking account to pay the funeral home a deposit to “care” for Dermot’s body, and she didn’t want to tell Terry. He’d always hated Dermot, jealous of his good looks and kind heart, Laura thought.
The TV blared out a mid-afternoon game show. The host looked overly tanned with bright white teeth. He was saying something about one of the contestant’s love for dogs. Dermot had loved dogs, although he wasn’t able to have one himself because he was gone from home too much.
“It wouldn’t be fair to the dog,” he’d told Laura. She’d thought about getting a dog herself. A big fluffy one with floppy ears and a tail that curled. Then Dermot could visit the pup at her trailer and stay for supper maybe. They wouldn’t have to always go out, hiding on the trails in the dark or sitting across from each other at the diner. But Laura also knew Terry wouldn’t be good around a dog. He’d love up on it until it was annoying or peed the floor or chewed one of his shoes, and then he’d kick it.
“Thanks,” Terry mumbled, taking the carton, hesitating, and then motioning to take the other grocery bags Laura was carrying. Pasta and canned soup and some cereal. She’d heat up some vegetable soup later for dinner. Sometimes, if she was too tired, she’d just eat it cold from the can.
She hadn’t had much appetite lately anyway. Everything tasted rotten. Today when she’d walked past the hotel room where Dermot died, she would’ve sworn she could smell the iron-rich tingle that meant blood.
Terry cracked eggs in a pan and fried up some bologna to go with them. Laura felt like she might throw up. She held a hand up to her mouth, trying to push down the nausea.
“I’ve got a job interview,” her brother announced as the eggs crackled over the high heat. “R&S Market is looking for cashiers and shelf stockers.”
Laura took off her coat and tried to make her way to the other side of the trailer, where her small room was sectioned off by another accordion door.
“That means I’ll need the car this afternoon.”
“That’s fine,” she said. But then Laura remembered. How could she have forgotten to stop on her way home? Now Terry was sure to find out.
“Can you drop me off in town when you go?” She forced her voice towards sounding careless. “I have a few errands to run. Still.” She added the last word pathetically.
“Okay.” She felt more than saw Terry shrug as he lifted his eggs from the pan and slid them onto his waiting bread. The frying bologna was starting to shrink around its casing in the pan, bubbling up in the center like an ulcer.
Terry ate his sandwich while Laura sat on her bed, staring at the peeling pink flower wallpaper that covered the plastic vinyl.
It was starting to get dark outside already, and the dim light angled in. Laura closed her eyes, enjoying the bright fire-bursts of color on the back of her eyelids for a moment.
“Let’s go,” Terry yelled from the other end of the trailer. She heard plates clattering in the sink, and then the door close and the car start up on its third try. As she got up and passed through the kitchenette, she automatically checked the gas burner was turned off. It was, but sometimes Terry forgot. The thought kept her up at night, that her brother might blow them both up because he made himself a grilled cheese. Sometimes, she’d go outside and turn the propane cylinder off to avoid having to worry.
She could see Terry in the car, banging his hands on the wheel to what she assumed was the classic rock station on the radio—they only got a few stations this far out. She was about to hurry over and pull from her special cache in the canister when a car pulled up outside the trailer.
It had sleek lines like a jungle cat. Its paint coat was so shiny and black it seemed to flow over the frame, and Laura’s first instinct was to go out and touch it. Her second instinct was to run.
A woman got out of the car, older than Laura but not old. Maybe in her early thirties? Trim blonde hair, slim, dressed in clothes that were simple but looked luscious under her thick winter coat.
“Hey!” Terry poked his head out of the car’s window. “You’re blocking me in here.”
Her brother’s tunnel-vision was forever reliable, Laura thought. If he were like some of the other guys who lived in trailers at the edge of the park, he’d have sized their visitor up as a mark, smoothed his hair, and tried to make her like him.
But not Terry. Terry was a man of principle, if not savvy. And he had an appointment to keep.
Laura opened the door as the woman climbed their cinder-block stairs. “Are you lost?” She tried to say it kindly, but Laura knew her voice had an edge. People like this lady didn’t get lost out here.
“I don’t think so.” She was wearing too much makeup, with kohl-rimmed eyes and chalky foundation, but the woman’s eyes were a deep brown and looked up with kindness at Laura. “I’m looking for Laura Taylor. Is that you?”
Laura bit back on the stock response of “Who wants to know?” Terry beat her to it anyway.
The woman turned and gave Terry an appraising look. “I’m sorry to have blocked you in. I can move my car if you need to get going.”
Terry stood up out of the car, putting his hands in his pockets. “It’s okay. I’ll stay right here.” He caught Laura’s eye, and she gave him a slight nod.
“I’m Susan. I think you knew my brother, Dermot?” she said.
Laura’s head spun for a moment.
“Dermot said he didn’t have any family.” Laura started to close the door.
“We’d been estranged. I was a lot older than him, and when my parents had him I was almost done with high school. I didn’t realize what home life was like for him, being alone while my parents were already almost elderly.” She paused and gave Laura a long stare. “I know he had a difficult childhood, and that he was trying to make the world better for other kids who were going through that.”
“So why are you here?” Laura asked.
“Because a week before he died, I got a letter from him in the mail, telling me about you. After we got the news about his death, I knew that I had to come see you.”
Laura paused. Then she extended her arm, waved Terry on, and opened the door wider for Susan. “You’d better come in.”
