by Nora Roberts
“Okay. I’ll take you.”
“What? Wait, give me a second.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “I’m messed up.”
“Of course you are. So I’ll drive you.”
“No. No, that’s okay.” He dropped his hands, shook his head. “It’s way out in Glendale.”
“Come on, we’ll take my car. Got your house keys?”
“My . . .” He stuck a hand in his pocket, pulled them out. “Yeah. Yeah. Listen, Reena, you don’t have to do this. I just need a minute to get my head around it.”
“You shouldn’t drive, trust me. And you shouldn’t go alone. Lock your door,” she told him, then led him to her car. “Where in Glendale?”
He rubbed his face like a man trying to scrub off sleep, then gave her an address and vague directions. She knew the area well enough from her college days.
“Had your grandmother been ill?”
“No. At least nothing major. Nothing I knew about. A lot of little stuff, I guess, that you deal with when you’re eighty-seven. Or -eight. Shit. I can’t remember.”
“Women don’t mind you not remembering their age.” She brushed a hand over the back of his as she drove. “Do you want to tell me what happened? Or would you rather just be quiet?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know exactly. Her neighbor found her. Got worried because she didn’t answer the phone. And she hadn’t been out to get her mail this morning. She’s—my grandmother, she’s habitual, you know?”
“Yes.”
“She has keys. The neighbor. Went over to check on her. She was still in bed. She must’ve died in her sleep. I guess. I don’t know. She was there all day, by herself all day.”
“Bowen, it’s hard to lose someone. But let me ask you, when your time comes, can you think of a better way to leave than to slip away in your own bed, in your own home, while you sleep?”
“Probably not.” He took a long breath. “Probably not. I just talked to her yesterday. Call every couple days. Just hey, how’s it going? She said her kitchen faucet was leaking again, so I was going to go by today or tomorrow, take care of it. I got hung up today and didn’t get over. Oh, shit.”
“You took care of her.”
“No, I just fixed stuff around the house. I went by every couple weeks, maybe. Not enough. I should’ve gone by more. Why do you always think of that after?”
“Because being human we tend to beat ourselves up. Is there any other family around?”
“Not really. My father’s in Arizona. Hell, I didn’t even call him. Uncle in Florida. A cousin in Pennsylvania.” He leaned his head back. “I have to find the numbers.”
The picture was coming clear, and the picture told her he was on his own in this. “Do you know what she wanted? Did she ever talk to you about arrangements?”
“Not really. A Mass, I guess. She’d want a Mass.”
“You’re Catholic?”
“She is—was. I mostly got over it. Last rites. Damn it. It’s too late for that. I feel stupid,” he said with a sigh. “I’ve never done anything like this before. My grandfather died almost twenty years ago. Car accident. My mother’s parents are out in Vegas.”
“Your grandparents live in Vegas?”
“Yeah. They love it. The last time I saw her, a couple weeks ago? We had really lousy iced tea—you know the kind you get out of a jar that’s got fake sugar and lemon flavoring in it.”
“Should be illegal.”
“Right.” He laughed a little. “We had lousy iced tea and Chips Ahoy! cookies out on her patio. She wasn’t the kind who baked and stuff. She liked to play pinochle and watch those World’s Worst whatever on TV. Like World’s Worst Pet Attacks. World’s Worst Vacation Disasters. She really dug on that crap. She smoked three cigarettes a day. Virginia Slims. Three. Not one less, not one more.”
“And you loved her.”
“I did. I never thought much about it, but I really did. Thanks. Thanks for talking me through this.”
“It’s okay.”
Steadier, he guided her in the rest of the way, to a pretty brick house with a meticulous yard.
There were white shutters and a short white porch. She imagined Bo had painted them for her—had probably built the little porch as well.
A woman in her mid-forties stepped out. Her eyes were red from weeping. She wore a powder blue tracksuit and had her light brown hair pulled back in a short tail.
“Bo. Bo. I’m so sorry.” She wrapped her arms around him, and her body shook as she hugged him. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She sniffled, drew back. “Sorry,” she said to Reena. “I’m Judy Dauber, from next door.”
“This is Reena. Catarina Hale. Thanks, Judy, for . . . waiting with her.”
“Of course, sweetie. Of course.”
“I should go in.”
“Go ahead.” Reena took his hand, gave it a squeeze. “I’ll come in a minute.”
Reena waited on the lawn, watched him go to the door, go inside.
“I thought she was sleeping,” Judy began. “For just a second. I thought, well, for heaven’s sake, Marge, what are you doing in bed this time of day? She stayed active. Then I realized, almost immediately, I realized. I talked to her just yesterday. She said Bo was coming by in a day or two, fix her faucet. And she’d have a list of little chores for him to do when he got here. She was awfully proud of him. Didn’t have two good words to say at once about his father, but she prized Bo.”
She fumbled out a tissue, wiped at her eyes. “She really prized Bo. He was the only one who took care, if you understand me. The only one who paid attention.”
“You did.”
Judy glanced over, and the tears rolled again.
“Judy.” Reena draped an arm over the woman’s shoulders as they walked toward the house. “Bo said his grandmother was Catholic. Do you know the name of her church, her pastor?”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course. I should’ve thought of that.”
“We can call. And maybe we can find numbers for her sons.”
Death might come simply, but its aftermath was invariably complicated. Reena did what she could, contacting the priest while Bo called his father. In a little desk in the spare room, papers were competently organized in a file drawer. Insurance, burial plot, a copy of the will, the deed to the house, the title to the aging Chevy Reena learned Marge Goodnight had driven to church and the grocery store.
The priest arrived so quickly, with a face so solemn Reena deduced Marge had been a prominent member of the parish.
She began to see more of Bo here. The tidiness of the house was certainly Marge. But its upkeep was undoubtedly his doing. There was none of the slapdash repairs, the jury-rigged details she often saw in the homes and apartments of seniors.
As Judy had said, he paid attention. He took care.
He handled the details, made the calls, spoke with the priest, made the decisions. Once, she saw him falter and moved over to take his hand.
“What can I do?”
“They, ah . . . They need to know what she should wear. For the funeral. I have to pick something.”
“Why don’t I do that? Men never know what we want to wear.”
“I’d appreciate it. Her stuff’s in there, in the closet. You could wait on it. They haven’t . . . I mean, she’s still in there.”
“It’s okay. I’ll take care of this.”
Maybe it was surreal, to go into the bedroom of a woman she’d never met, to go through the closet while a body lay in the bed. Out of respect, Reena stepped to the bed first, looked down.
Marge Goodnight had let her hair go slate gray, and had kept it short and straight. No-nonsense then, Reena decided. Her left hand, with its wedding ring set, lay outside the covers.
She imagined Bo had sat there, held her hand while he said his good-byes.
“It’s too much for him,” she said quietly. “Picking a dress for you is just a little out of his scope. I hope you don’t mind if I handle this part.”
S
he opened the closet, smiled when she saw built-in shelves and cubbies. “He built these, didn’t he?” She glanced over her shoulder at Marge. “You like things organized, and he did the work. It’s a good design. I may have to hire him to do something similar for me. What about this blue suit, Marge? Dignified, but not stuffy. And this blouse, with just a little bit of lace down the placket. Pretty, but not too frilly. I think I’d have liked you.”
She found a garment bag, hung the outfit inside, and though she realized it was unnecessary, selected shoes, then underwear from the bureau.
Before she left the room, she turned to the bed again. “I’ll light a candle for you, and have my mother say a rosary. Nobody says a rosary like my mama. Safe passage, Marge.”
Reena took two hours’ personal time to attend the funeral. He hadn’t asked her to come. In fact, she thought he’d deliberately avoided asking her. She sat in the back, not surprised the Mass was so well attended. Her brief conversation with the pastor had cemented her conclusion that Margaret Goodnight had been a fixture of the church.
They’d brought flowers, as friends and neighbors do, so the church smelled of lilies and incense and candle wax. She stood and knelt, sat and spoke, the rhythm of the Mass as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. When the priest spoke of the dead, he spoke of her in personal and affectionate terms.
She’d mattered, Reena thought. She’d left her mark. And wasn’t that the point?
When Bo walked up to the pulpit to speak, she didn’t think Marge would mind if she admired the way he looked in a dark suit.
“My grandmother,” he began, “was tough. She didn’t suffer fools. She figured you should use the brains God gave you, otherwise you were just taking up space. She did a lot more than take up space. She told me that during the Depression she worked in a dime store, made a dollar a day. Had to walk two miles each way—fair weather or foul. She didn’t think it was that big a deal, she just did what she had to do.
“She told me once she thought she’d become a nun, then decided she’d rather have sex. I hope it’s okay to say that in here,” he added after a ripple of laughter. “She married my grandfather in 1939. They had what she called a two-hour honeymoon before they both had to go back to work. Apparently, they managed to make my uncle Tom in that short window. She lost a daughter at six months, and a son in Vietnam who never saw his twentieth birthday. She lost her husband, but she never lost, well, her faith. Or her independence, which was just as important to her. She taught me how to ride a two-wheeler, and to finish what I start.”
He cleared his throat. “She’s survived by her two sons, my cousin Jim and me. I’m going to miss her.”
Reena waited outside the church while people spoke to Bo before walking to their cars. It was a pretty morning, with strong sun and the smell of freshly mown grass.
She noted the two people who stayed closest to him. A man of about his age, about five-ten, trendy wire-framed glasses, good, dark suit and shoes. And a woman around thirty with short, bright red hair wearing sunglasses and a sleeveless black dress.
From what he’d told her, they couldn’t be blood kin. But she recognized family when she saw it.
He broke away, walked to Reena. “Thanks for coming. I haven’t had much chance to talk to you, to thank you for everything.”
“It’s all right. I’m sorry I can’t go to the cemetery. I have to get back. It was a lovely service, Bo. You did just right.”
“Scary.” He put sunglasses over his tired eyes. “I haven’t had to talk in front of so many people since the nightmare of public speaking in high school.”
“Well, you aced it.”
“Glad it’s done.” He looked over, and his jaw tightened. “I’ve got to ride out with my father.” He nodded toward a man in a black suit. His black hair had just a touch of silver at the temples, like gleaming wings. Tanned and fit, she thought. And impatient.
“We don’t seem to have anything to say to each other. How does that happen?”
“I don’t know, but it does.” She touched her lips to each of his cheeks in turn. “Take care.”
At ten on a rainy morning in June that turned the air to steam, Reena stood over the partially destroyed body of a twenty-three-year-old woman. What was left of her was on the nasty carpet in a nasty room in a hotel where “fleabag” would have been a generous adjective.
Her name was De Wanna Johnson, according to the driver’s license in the vinyl purse found under the bed—and the desk clerk’s statement.
As her face and upper torso were all but gone, official identification would come later. She’d been wrapped in a blanket, with stuffing from the mattress strewn over and around her to act as trailers.
Reena took pictures while O’Donnell started the grid.
“So, De Wanna checks in three days ago with some guy. She pays cash for two nights. While it is possible DeWanna decided to sleep on the floor, and set her own face on fire, I scent a whiff of foul play.”
O’Donnell chewed contemplatively on his gum. “Maybe the frying pan over there covered with blood and gray matter gave you the first clue.”
“It didn’t hurt. Jesus, De Wanna, bet he did a number on you first. He had a good combustible source of fuel with the blanket and mattress stuffing, then you’ve got her body fat for the candle effect. But he screwed up. Should’ve opened a window, should have coated this carpet with flammable liquid. Not enough oxygen, not enough flame to finish the job. Hope she was dead before he lit her. Hope the ME and radiologists confirm that.”
She stepped out to go through the rest of the room, the excuse for a kitchenette. Broken dishes on the floor, what she identified as ground beef mixed with Hamburger Helper sloshed over the graying linoleum.
“Looks like she was fixing dinner when they got into it. Remains of that in the skillet along with pieces of her. He probably grabbed the pan right off the stove.”
She turned from it, gripped her hands as if gripping the handle, swung out. “Knocked her back. Blood spatter here looks consistent with that. Comes right back with a backhanded follow-through. Knocks her back again, and down. Maybe pounds on her some more before he thinks, Whoa, shit, look what I did.”
She stepped around the body. “Figures to light her up, cover up the murder. But animal fat doesn’t burn cleanly. Modest flame destroys tissues, takes her face and more, but it doesn’t bring the room temp, not a closed room, up enough to ignite the stuffing, even the bulk of the blanket he wrapped around her.”
“So we’re probably not going to be looking for a chemist.”
“Or somebody who planned ahead. Frenzy of the moment, not premeditated, from the looks of the scene.”
She moved into the bathroom. The back of the toilet was crammed with cosmetics. Hair spray, hair gel, mascara, lipsticks, blusher, eyeshadows.
Crouching down, she began to pick through the trash with her gloved hands. Moments later, she came back in holding a box.
“I think we’ve got a motive.” She held up the home pregnancy test.
The desk clerk’s vague description of the man who’d checked in with the victim was given a boost by the prints Reena lifted from the frying pan.
“Got him,” she told O’Donnell, and swiveled around in her chair to face his desk. “Jamal Earl Gregg, twenty-five. Got a sheet. Assault, possession with intent, malicious wounding. Did a stint in Red Onion in Virginia. Released three months ago. Got a Richmond address listed. De Wanna Johnson’s driver’s license had a Richmond address.”
“So maybe we’ll take a field trip.”
“I’ve got a current MasterCard in her name. It wasn’t in her purse, or on the scene.”
“If he took it, he’ll use it. Asshole. Let’s put out the alert. Maybe we’ll save ourselves a trip down Ninety-five.”
Reena wrote the report, did a search for known associates.
“The only tie I can find to Baltimore is an inmate on his block at Red Onion. Guy’s still inside, doing a nickel for dealing.”
“There’s no record on De Wanna Johnson. No criminal, no juvie, no arrests. But she and Gregg went to the same high school.”
O’Donnell tipped down the reading glasses he’d been forced to use. “High school sweethearts?”
“Stranger things. He gets out, scoops her up, and they’re off to Baltimore—on her dime, in her car. Must be love. I’m going to call the address listed on her license, see what I can dig out.”
“Let me update the captain,” O’Donnell said. “See if he wants us to go to Richmond on this.”
When O’Donnell came back, Reena held up a finger. “I appreciate that, Mrs. Johnson. If you hear from your daughter, or hear anything about Jamal Gregg’s whereabouts, please contact me. You have my number. Yes. Thank you.”
Reena pushed back in her chair. “High school sweethearts. In fact, so sweet, De Wanna has a five-year-old daughter. Her mother’s got the kid. Jamal and DeWanna left three days ago—over the mother’s objections. Job opportunity. She said her girl didn’t have a brain cell working when it came to that no-account, and she hopes we lock the thieving bastard up good this time, so her girl has a chance to make a decent life. I didn’t tell her the probability is high De Wanna’s already lost her chance.”
“Got one kid by her. He just gets out of prison, ready to get something going, and she tells him she’s got another cooking. He loses it, does her, lights her, takes her credit card, cash, car.”
“Works for me.”
“We’re getting cleared to drive down to Richmond. Hold on.” He picked up his ringing phone. “Arson Unit. O’Donnell. Yeah. Yeah.” He scribbled as he spoke. “Stall the authorization. We’re on our way.”
Reena was already up, grabbing her jacket. “Where?”
“Liquor store on Central.”
Reena grabbed a radio on the run, requested backup.
He was gone when they got there, and frustration had Reena standing in the rain, kicking the rear tire of the car Jamal had left sitting at the curb. She pulled out her cell phone when it sang. “Hale. Okay. Got it.” She clicked off. “Victim was six weeks pregnant. Cause of death, bludgeoning.”