Death Before Facebook (Skip Langdon #4) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  Skip thought Lenore knew very well that she had seen—that Lenore had seen her watching, and noted it for reasons of her own. She said, “You must know Neetsie and Suby too.”

  “A little, sure. But not through Geoff especially, through the TOWN. Neetsie’s dad got her on it, the same as he got Geoff on. And then Geoff got Suby on.”

  Time to ask her about Kathryne Brazil? Something told Skip to wait.

  She certainly wasn’t ready to ask about the skull and robes.

  Lenore said: “God, I miss Geoff! But I’m doing a little better. I’m handling it, I think.” She blew her nose.

  When the crime lab and Rountree had gone, Skip asked Lenore to go through the house.

  “Would you mind going with me?”

  “Okay.”

  And without asking, she handed the baby to Skip.

  Skip wondered if she’d have done that with a male cop.

  But the little girl cuddled sweetly, so she could hardly be mad.

  It was a funny thing. Skip had read somewhere that most police officers, queried as to why they’d chosen their jobs, said they “wanted to help.” How often, she thought, do you really get that opportunity? It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t busting scumbags, but there was something satisfying about following Lenore from room to room, holding little Caitlin.

  Lenore went through her jewelry box; her underwear drawer, where she’d stashed a wad of cash; her medicine cabinet, where she had what she called “prescription drugs”; and her living room, where her TV and VCR reposed.

  Skip noticed that some of the candles from the other night were still in place. “You must like candles.”

  “Ummf.”

  The altar had been dismantled, but some of its accoutrements were scattered about the room, including the pentacle plate. “How unusual!” Skip said, picking it up as if to admire it. “What’s it for, exactly?”

  “It’s my lucky star.” Lenore gave her a warm smile. “A friend gave it to me.”

  So much for innocently teasing out cult information. Yet Lenore didn’t seem particularly rattled. She gave Skip a puzzled look, absently holding her arms for Caitlin. “It looks as if everything’s here.”

  “Did Geoff give you anything to keep? A book, perhaps?”

  “No, why?”

  “You must think this has something to do with his death—you asked to speak to me.”

  Lenore took a moment to answer. “I don’t know. Maybe I do. It’s funny, I didn’t think about it. I just saw you at Geoff’s funeral and I thought of you.” She paused, turning the idea over in her head. “You’re the only cop I know.”

  That was New Orleans—you talked to whom you knew, and you just about always knew someone.

  Lenore genuinely seemed to like her. And she had asked for Skip—like a good little citizen—when she discovered her burglary. Could it all be an act?

  Easily, she thought. “So me a favor, okay?” she said. “Don’t post about this on the TOWN.”

  The girl actually looked puzzled. “Really? Why not?”

  * * *

  I had imagined him dead so many hundreds of times, and yet I could not have conceived of the horror of it. I must have seen two hundred dead bodies by that time, but when it is someone you know, no matter how much you may have hated him—and for good reason—no matter how much he may have hurt someone you love deeply, you love life more. It is a fact of biology, of our DNA, and is perhaps as simple and basic, as ignoble in the end, as the urge to rut.

  Whatever my mind told me—my good, rational, U. Va., white male mind— I was ill at the sight of him, would have given anything to pluck out the bullet and repair the torn flesh.

  I believe Marguerite felt the same. She cried torrents, as if he had not made every moment of her waking life a living hell. She was beautiful in her grief, her despair not for Leighton, but for the same thing for which I grieved—for the rawness of life itself. And perhaps for her child; I cannot say that I will ever really know what went on in Marguerite’s mind, only that she is a force of nature.

  She was magnificent today. I believe if I had seen her for the first time in that church, in her severely chic widow’s weeds, instead of so many years ago in the Dream Palace, she would have had the same effect. Cole Terry, on the other hand, is rather a horse’s ass.

  PEARCE HAD WRITTEN a little bit of “Regrets,” the thing he cared about, as a sort of warm-up to working on the story about the murder. He really did need to get started on that.

  Because this was the story that was going to resurrect his entire career. And his life. He knew how to do it now.

  He could scrap the damn stupid screenplay he was working on—about the eighteenth story in as many years—and turn this one into a movie. And it would sell too, because it would make national news and maybe People Magazine, which everyone knew was the bible of every producer in Hollywood.

  The plan was simple. He could hardly believe he’d been so brilliant as to think of it—it really did kill quite a few birds with one stone.

  (“If you’ll excuse the expression,” he said to himself, stroking his mustache devilishly.)

  Who first? he thought.

  But there was really no competition.

  Without even calling first, he drove to Lenore’s. She had decided late last night, at the TOWN dinner, to call in sick again today.

  “Pearce!” she squealed. “I was okay last night, wasn’t I?” She seemed surprised to see him. “I mean, I know I was weepy, but under the circumstances—”

  He took her hand. “I was worried about you, that’s all.”

  “You’re such a sweetheart. Honestly, I think Kit’s wrong about the TOWN. All my best friends are on it—I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  He had to get her talking, get her loose. “I thought you might want to take a walk.”

  “Oh. Well, I kept Caitlin home today. She’s asleep.”

  “Let’s have a beer then. I want you to relax.”

  She came back with two beers, smiling for a change. That wasn’t especially like Lenore. He wondered if she’d dropped something. Maybe Prozac. The whole world was on Prozac these days. “You’re such a good friend to me,” she said.

  She sat beside him on the sofa, rather than in one of the chairs. Did that mean what he thought it did? He put out a hand and let it rest on her neck for a millisecond. Gently, he began to massage her. “I was thinking last night how stressed out you must be.”

  “Neetsie too. She lost a brother.”

  “You lost your best friend. Maybe that’s worse.”

  She settled into his working hand, adjusted her body to accommodate it. “I’ve been thinking about Geoff a lot.”

  “We all have.”

  “I was so mean about stuff.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sex, I mean. I never wanted to have sex with him.”

  “Why don’t you put your head in my lap? I can’t get to your other shoulder.”

  She complied.

  “I mean, what would it have hurt? I can’t help it. I feel so guilty about it.”

  “You and Geoff didn’t have sex?”

  “Not very much.” She giggled. “Not if I could help it.”

  “But you did something even more important.”

  “What?” She lifted her head she was so surprised; the young were absurdly single-minded.

  “You confided in each other.”

  She lowered her head. “Oh. Well, yeah, we did.”

  Lenore hadn’t realized he was such a big teddy bear—he was just Bigeasy, TOWN guru. But not really the uncle type.

  She was glad she’d spent most of the afternoon cleaning up after the burglary. It was sweet of him to check up on her; she hadn’t really thought he was that good a friend. But she shouldn’t have doubted. The TOWN was the village and he was the village elder; it was natural he should call on her. It made her feel warm and fuzzy, almost as if she’d had to lose Geoff to find out she had other friends. Usually she was so
busy with Caitlin she didn’t have much time left over.

  I must take time, she thought. I have to start a new life.

  Geoff had filled up a lot of holes for her. He had always been there when she wanted some oysters, wanted to go to a movie.

  For now, the beer was really very relaxing. And it was nice of Pearce to rub her neck, something Geoff never did. He was really a very thoughtful man and there were so few thoughtful men in her life. In fact, no men at all unless she counted her father.

  Lying on her stomach, she felt Pearce pat her upper back, almost like burping a baby. “You’ll get over it, Lenore. We’ve all lost somebody valuable but we’ll all get over it.”

  She realized she was crying.

  Astonished, she sat up. “I wasn’t crying for Geoff. I was crying for me.”

  “Well, it’s only natural.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I was feeling sorry for myself because I realized that without Geoff, days could go by and I’d never see another adult except the people at the store.”

  “Young lady, you’re going to have to get out more.”

  “What’ll I do? What do people do who’ve just lost someone close?”

  “Let’s have another beer, shall we?”

  She went to get a pair of them, debating whether to tell him about the burglary, but in the end deciding against it. She was so damned tired of always seeming the victim!

  When Pearce had taken a healthy sip—in fact, slugged down about a third of the bottle—he said, “I’ll tell you what you can do. You can keep an old man company every now and then.”

  “You’re not old.” She knew he was just being nice, that he didn’t need company and had no intention of hanging out with her.

  “I’m old and I’m lonesome.”

  Lonesome. Now that was something else. Did he find her attractive?

  He must, she thought with sudden interest. Of course he does. Why wouldn’t he?

  But put in that context, he was old. She couldn’t… no, she just couldn’t possibly… he was nice and everything, but he was her dad’s age.

  “It’s sweet that you and Geoff could confide in each other. I envy you that.”

  “You don’t… uh… have anybody…?”

  “Come on. Who’d want to tell me their secrets?”

  “Well, you’re a nice-looking man.”

  “But do I have an honest face?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, tell me something. Did you and Geoff talk much about the flashbacks he was having?”

  “We talked about things a lot. Thoughts. Stuff on the TOWN.”

  “Did he ever say anything to you about a journal he was keeping?”

  Something clicked with Lenore; something Langdon had asked, about Geoff giving her something to keep. “He kept a journal? He never mentioned it, but… do you know something about it?”

  He shrugged. “Just a surmise.”

  What if he was lying? Lenore felt a tiny frisson about her burglary. Her burglary in which nothing was taken.

  “Let me rub your feet, shall I?”

  She gasped, thinking she needed to get him out of there… now! But then cooler heads prevailed. Pearce was the one person who couldn’t be the burglar. If he were the burglar, he’d know she didn’t have Geoff’s journal.

  And she could really use a little adult attention.

  * * *

  Neetsie had called shortly after lunch. “Dad, I need to talk. I just don’t… I can’t…”

  Cole sighed. “What is it, honey?”

  “I don’t know. I got through yesterday fine; I even went to dinner with friends and they talked about Geoff and I was absolutely okay. But today I woke up crying and I…”

  “It’s hard on all of us, sweetheart.”

  “But I couldn’t go to work. I mean, that isn’t even the point. It’s not just that I feel sad, it’s that I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just…”

  “Well, look. I’ll come get you.”

  “No!”

  “What?’

  “I don’t want to see Mom.”

  So Cole had gone to Neetsie’s, to comfort a daughter coming face-to-face with her own mortality. She had always come to him when she was afraid, and it seemed to him that she was afraid a lot, of one thing and another.

  He didn’t know how to comfort her, how to tell her that the worst might be over, that if she had even the slightest success in the world, she’d never again have to live in the kind of poverty in which she’d been brought up.

  Not that her apartment was a step up—the opposite, in fact It was a roach-infested studio in the Faubourg—a big one, but in disrepair, although furnished cleverly. Neetsie was nothing if not clever. She could have been a designer. Instead, she had some piddling job at a computer store, and wouldn’t get another because she didn’t want anything that took too much of her energy; she needed to have an arid work life so that her real work, her acting, could blossom.

  This was her theory.

  His was that as long as she had to work all day, she might as well do something that paid well.

  He found her wearing jeans and a long black sweater, Kleenex in hand.

  “Oh, Dad!” She stared at him, a hard, beseeching, “give-my-brother-back” kind of stare, but she didn’t throw her arms around him. He sensed that she didn’t want to be held.

  “What is it, honey?”

  She flung herself on her duded-up bed; he sat in her one director’s chair.

  “Life is just so fragile.” She sobbed out the last couple of words, apparently in the grip of a depression she couldn’t shake.

  “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ll feel the wind in your face, and it’ll make you feel alive. And you’ll move your butt; endorphins will kick in.”

  She made a face. “That’s the last thing I want to do. I don’t feel like budging. I can barely get to the bathroom when I have to pee.”

  “You said you felt afraid.” How many conversations had he had with her that started like this? How many with Marguerite?

  “I don’t know. I might have a lump in my breast.”

  He might have panicked, but he had been here before. “You’re pretty young for that.”

  “Well, it might just be a rib. But I feel hot all over, and then cold, and it seems like my heart beats really fast. Do you know what palpitations are, Daddy?”

  “You get them when you fall in love.”

  “I’m not kidding, I think I’m sick.”

  “Two people in the same family can’t die within a week. What do you think the odds of that would be?”

  “It happens all the time. Somebody gets stressed out and drops dead at the funeral.”

  “The funeral’s over. Anyway, those people are a lot older than you.” He wanted to go over and take her hands, but he knew better. When she was this way, she was in a shell that she didn’t want violated. “Listen to me. You’re fine. You’re just upset and you are stressed out. But at your age, stress can’t do all that much to you.”

  “It can give you ulcers.”

  “How’s your tummy?”

  “Fine.” She actually smiled. “It’s my chest that feels funny.”

  “Dr. John says you’ve got a broken heart.”

  She laughed. “Do Dr. John.”

  Dr. John was a part he’d always played for her when she was sick; it was based partly oh the voodoo priest of the slave days, and partly on the contemporary musician, whose records Cole would play, and whose hoarse voice he’d use, when “curing” her.

  He raised his hands and made them into claws. “By lizard and snake and skull and scorpion, I lift the hurt and ease the pain.” His voice was like gravel. He got up and began to dance in a circle around Neetsie, the choreography inspired by movies whose makers had failed to research Native American culture.

  “Dr. John put a spell on you! Put the gris-gr
is on that hurt!” He pronounced it “hoit” like the musician, which made Neetsie laugh.

  He stretched out his arms, made V’s of his fingers, and chanted, “Anita Bonita Juanita be cured! Mojo work and gris-gris take root. Out of this girl, broken heart be lured!”

  “Daddy. It’s the only heart I’ve got.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He did the whole thing again, with the V’s and the gravelly voice. “Out of this girl, the sadness be lured.” He made the last word a big deal. And then he started to dance around some more, singing the mojo song, like he always did when he played Dr. John: “I got my mojo working, got my mojo workin’, and it sure do work on you.”

  He dropped into a squat at her feet. “Feel better?”

  She nodded, smiling, almost her normal self. “I love Dr. John. Maybe it’s why I want to be an actress.”

  “Sweetheart, I hope you can do better than that.” He picked himself up and sat in his chair again.

  “You know what that cop asked me? She came to the TOWN dinner last night.”

  Cole nodded. “I knew Pearce asked her. What did she want to know?”

  “She asked me what I liked best about Geoff. I told her about the time he woke me up for the puppies. What did you like best?”

  “When I first met him, he was just a little boy about eleven or twelve, and he came over to me and said, ‘Do you know how to play baseball and basketball?’

  “I said, ‘Sure. Why?’ But he didn’t answer, he just said, ‘How about chess?’ I said, ‘Uh-huh.’ And he said, ‘Poker?’ I don’t even remember all the things he asked, but you see what he was doing? He was checking out my daddy qualifications.

  Just when I thought it was all done, he said, ‘Well, what kind of cookies can you bake?’ I said, ‘Chocolate chip,’ and he said, ‘Uh-uh. Oatmeal,’ and went away. So I knew I was in, as long as I brought some oatmeal cookies every time I came over.”

  “And that was it? That was the best thing he ever did?”

  “Well, no. See, he used the cookies too—like, at first they’d be an excuse to stay around while he ate them. Then he’d offer me some; and then he’d say he’d play catch for a while if I’d bring him some more. You know how kids don’t want to say they like you?”