He thought about his own life . . . his work, his cars, his big kitchen, his western novels, his collection of old master paintings with sheep in them, his table at Grandma O’s. He loved them all. But they were things.
He thought some more, his finger stroking the bristly hairs on the end of his nose. Had he ever loved a person? Was he even capable of that kind of love? Did he love Joe? No . . . If he had, he would have spoken to him regularly, invited him to dinner, done something special for him every birthday. Sure, he was seething with anger at the shooter for taking Joe’s life. But in truth that was his usual reaction to murder. He hated murderers, but that didn’t mean he loved the victims. He was uncomfortable even thinking about love between male relatives. Love didn’t seem like the right word, even if they treated you like their own child. Love was a word to be used only in regard to women.
Okay . . . He had loved Susan, the girl from his long ago past. Or did he? Why had that not worked out? Was it his fault for not caring enough? What about Kit? If he’d ever had a daughter, he’d want her to be just like Kit. And he’d do anything to protect her from harm. In fact, had done exactly that a number of times over the years. Did he love her? He never swore out loud and rarely did even in his head. But now he wondered, what the hell is love?
Practically every home on the Bergeron’s street had a nice lawn and well-chosen landscaping, which consisted mostly of shrubs and small trees, nothing large enough to provide any shade. Accustomed to living in the French Quarter, where the two-story buildings crowding the narrow streets often permit only a limited view of the sky, whenever Kit left its confines, she always felt as she did now, uncomfortably exposed. Unlike the Hartley’s neighborhood, which had been full of pickup trucks, the vehicles here ran to sedans, economy cars, and a few SUVs.
The Bergeron home was one of only a few two-story buildings on the street. And it was the sole residence with a circular driveway, which occupied most of the front yard. She pulled in behind a silver four-door sedan and got out.
The home’s front door opened even before she announced her arrival.
Showing her new badge, Kit introduced herself, feeling extremely awkward about saying she was Detective Franklyn.
“We’ve been waiting all day for someone to contact us,” a slim woman with long, straight hair of indeterminate color said, sharply.
Kit didn’t feel like starting her inquiry with an apology, so she said, “I understand. But I’m here now.”
“Please, come in,” a wiry man with closely set eyes said, gently moving the woman out of the way. Both were wearing clothes that Kit thought of as office suitable.
Kit stepped into a room containing an eclectic ensemble of furniture that had clearly not been chosen by someone with a sense of color.
“Is my daughter dead?” the woman asked, her eyes wide and staring.
“Acadia,” the man said sternly. “Let the detective handle this conversation.” Then to Kit; “Please have a seat.”
He waved her to a zebra-striped sofa. While Kit accepted his offer, Paul went to a fluorescent pink armchair and sat down. His wife remained standing, leaning against the front door, her lips compressed into thin veal strips of disapproval.
Kit got out a pen, turned to a fresh page in her notebook, and said, “How old is Betty?”
“She was twenty last month,” Paul said. Then, not waiting for more questions, he went on automatic. “She’s a junior at Tulane, majoring in molecular biology.”
“Must be a smart girl,” Kit said, noting what he said.
“Wants to be a genetic counselor,” Paul continued. “We don’t live that far from Tulane. She could have stayed here, but she just had to have her own place. If she was here, we could keep an eye on her.”
“That was the problem if you remember,” Acadia said.
Paul shot her a disapproving look.
Apart from the stress of having a missing daughter, Kit thought the couple’s marriage likely had a lot of other issues.
“So you didn’t like her going out on her own,” Kit said to Paul.
“It didn’t make economic sense.”
“Did you argue with her about it?”
“A few times.”
“How long ago did she move out?”
Paul shrugged. “Six-seven months ago.”
“When did you last see her?”
He looked at Acadia. “How long has it been . . . four or five weeks?”
“Probably four,” Acadia said. “We were in the neighborhood and went over to her apartment to see how she was doing. We didn’t call first, and she got upset, said we weren’t showing her the respect an adult deserves.”
Then Paul said to Kit, “Do you have kids?”
“No.”
“They’re beautiful when they first come out, then they’re a pain for the first year and the second. After that it gradually gets better until you can’t imagine your life without them.” He stared straight ahead for a few seconds, not speaking until his eyes teared up. He wiped at them, glanced at Acadia, then turned quickly back to Kit. “Is she dead?”
“At this point, there’s absolutely no way to know what’s going on,” Kit said. “But I promise you I will find out. Do you have a recent picture of her?”
Paul took out his cell phone and fiddled with it for a few seconds then came over to where Kit was sitting, turned the screen toward her, and gave her the phone.
The picture was the head and shoulders of an attractive girl with long brown hair and what appeared to be naturally full lips. Her phone was in one hand, meaning it was most likely a ‘selfie’ taken in front of a mirror. Unlike the silly poses most young woman effect these days when taking an informal picture, she didn’t have her tongue out or her fingers up in a v or a hook ‘em horns. Her expression was neutral to slightly toward ‘stop bothering me.’
“Where’d you get this?” Kit said handing the phone back.
“Pulled it from her Facebook page.”
Pleased to hear that the girl was on Facebook, where a lot of information about her could be easily mined, Kit said, “I’ll need a copy of the picture. I could get it from her page but it’s awkward to do with my phone. Could you just text it to me?”
“Sure,” Paul said. “What’s your number?”
In less than a minute Kit had the picture on her phone. “What’s her Facebook address?” After Paul gave her that, she said, “Did Betty have any boyfriends?”
“When she still lived here, she rarely dated,” Acadia said. “Didn’t want anything to interfere with her studies. She was very goal-oriented.”
“My report said that you first learned Betty was missing from the girl she shared her apartment with.”
That’s right,” Acadia said. “Her name is Dee Evans. I’m sure she knows more about Betty’s current relationships and friends than we do.”
“Where’s their apartment?”
Paul told her the address.
“I guess you also have Dee Evans’ phone number.”
With that noted, Kit stood up, put her phone and notebook back in her bag, and fished out a business card, which she handed to Paul. “You’ve already got my number, but here’s my card just in case. If you hear anything, give me a call.”
“Please, keep us informed,” Acadia said as Kit headed for the door.
Kit mentally sorted through what she might say in response. The only time she was likely to call them before she found their daughter was to ask more questions. So she simply said, “Think positive.”
Chapter 9
Back in her car, Kit called Dee Evans to see if she was home. Evans picked up the call on the second ring.
“Hi Dee,” Kit said. “I’m from the NOPD. I’m working on finding Betty Bergeron. I was coming over to speak with you but wanted to make sure you were there.”
“I’m actually at the drug store a few blocks away. I’ll be here another five minutes or so, then I’ll go home to meet you.”
The girls’ apartmen
t was a few blocks from Tulane. Estimating the distance, Kit figured Evans would probably get there first. Before starting the car, Kit went to the web browser on her phone to see if she could bring up Betty’s Facebook page. It was a slow and cumbersome process, but in a few minutes, she had the site in front of her, only to discover that the page had almost nothing on it. There was the picture Kit had obtained from Paul Bergeron, but no others. Betty had listed her favorite book as Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, her most liked movie was Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that’s it. Hugely disappointed at how useless the page turned out to be, Kit quit the browser and put the phone on the seat beside her.
She took Airlines Highway back into New Orleans. Turning onto South Carrolton, she immediately felt more at home. In most places the urban streets have no character. They could be transplanted from one city to the other with no visual disconnect. Not so on Carrolton. Part of that was the presence of what the natives called the neutral ground, a wide median with small trees planted on each side of two sets of trolley tracks. Equally important to its character were the live oaks on each side of the street, whose twisted limbs formed a leafy canopy over the adjacent lanes of traffic. Somehow all this mitigated the lack of any zoning regulation. She passed a church with a long front walk that sat next to a beadwork-decorated Victorian home built practically against the sidewalk. Next came three more homes equally close to the sidewalk, the first, a New Orleans shotgun, the next two, Queen Anne four squares. Then came a little boutique restaurant with tables out front. Who wouldn’t want to live in such a city?
Live in such a . . . She imagined Betty Bergeron sitting at one of the tables at the restaurant. Maybe Betty had never done that. The question now was, would she ever be able to?
The address Kit sought was on Willow Street, which was one way coming toward Carrolton. So she turned onto Jeanette, went down to the correct block, and cut over to Willow, a street also lined by live oaks.
She arrived at the girls’ apartment, actually a two-story duplex, just as an attractive platinum blonde emerged from a white Ford Focus that had apparently just pulled into the short driveway. The girl was wearing denim cutoffs so brief you could almost see her butt cheeks.
Kit parked behind the Ford and got out. “I guess you’re Dee?”
The girl did an awkward curtsy with her keys dangling from one hand and her drug store purchase from the other. She wore her straight hair in an asymmetric cut, one side ending just below her ear, the other sweeping down below her chin. It looked great, but where her hair was long, it obviously partially blocked her vision.
Kit flashed her badge. “I’m . . .” she hesitated, once again feeling strange about how she was about to introduce herself, “. . . Detective Franklyn.”
“I’m glad they sent a female detective,” Dee said. “Have you ever like, shot anybody?”
“Actually, I have.”
“Did it bother you?”
“Not in the least. Can we go inside and talk?”
“Sure.”
Dee led the way and opened the front door.
They stepped into a living room furnished with a lot of inexpensive pale wood furniture, woven rugs, and cheap prints on the wall, showing that it was possible to decorate well and not spend a lot of money.
Dee put her purchase on the counter that separated the living area from a small galley kitchen and invited Kit to have a seat.
A moment later, facing Dee across a blonde coffee table shaped like a big kidney, notebook open, pen ready, Kit said, “When did you first notice that Betty was missing?”
“This morning. Well . . . I first thought something was wrong Friday morning. We have separate bedrooms, but I usually hear her come in after her shift at work. She works nights as a bartender at Gator Willie’s and usually gets in like, around 1:00 a.m. I wait tables most nights at Nat’s grill. We close at eight, so I’m home before she is. The sound of her key in the front door lock always wakes me up. But Thursday night I didn’t wake up, and in the morning she wasn’t there. I didn’t think too much about it and just went on to school . . . I’m majoring in Social Work at Tulane. Then Friday night, I had to get up and pee at 2:00 a.m. and afterward I looked in her room and she wasn’t there. This morning, she still wasn’t home. I tried to call her on her cell, but it went right to voice mail, which I think means either her phone was off or her battery was dead. And I don’t think she ever just turns it off.”
Kit took out her own cell phone. “Let’s call her again and see what happens. What’s her number?”
Kit punched it into her phone as Dee recited it, then listened to the call. “Direct to voice mail,” Kit said. “So when did you last see her?”
“Just before I went to work on Thursday. That would be about 4:30 p.m.”
“She have any boyfriends?”
“Not that I know of. She isn’t like, very social. So a guy would have a hard time getting the time of day from her.”
“But she did set up a Facebook page.”
“No, I did that for her. Have you seen it?”
“Yes.”
“I made her take the selfie you see on there. Even though her expression shows she was like, kind of pissed at me for pushing her to get on Facebook, you can still tell she’s beautiful.”
“The page doesn’t have hardly anything on it.”
“What’s that old saying, ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make ‘em swim’.”
“That’s not exactly quoted right, but I get the idea.”
“She comes across as a totally serious self-centered nerd, but she isn’t, not really. Like me, she doesn’t have much free time, but I know for the last two years she helped serve meals to homeless people at the Orleans Parish sheriff’s Thanksgiving dinner, and has donated time to Meals on Wheels. That’s more than I can say for myself. I hope she’s all right. Is she . . . do you think?”
Ignoring the question, Kit said, “Is her bedroom unlocked?”
“Yeah, want to see it?”
“Please.”
A casual search of Betty’s bedroom produced nothing that would help find her. The girl didn’t keep a diary, but Kit did find a small, jeweled notebook containing all her passwords. Using the one she saw in there for the girl’s e-mail account, Kit checked all her messages; both received and sent for the last month. She also reviewed the recently deleted file. In no case, did she find any that suggested it might be from a male friend. Nor was there any evidence of trouble she might be having.
Finished with the computer, Kit shut it off, stood up, and looked at Dee, who had been sitting on the bed watching. “I’m going to hold on to this little notebook for a while.”
“Sure, okay.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have been upset with Betty for anything?”
Dee’s eyebrows knitted together as she thought about the question. Then they arched upward as she obviously remembered something. “I was walking across campus with her a couple weeks ago and this blond guy comes up and says, ‘Thought I’d give you another chance. How about a dinner date? You pick the night. We’ll go someplace really nice.’ Then he reached out and took hold of her wrist.
“Betty yanked her arm free and said, ‘I told you I’m not interested. Now get lost.’ She took off so fast she left me standing there. And I can tell you, the guy was like, not happy.
“When I caught up to her, I asked about him and she told me his name, but I can’t recall it right now. I want to say Leon, but I know that’s not it. I’ve seen him in the LBC eating lunch a few times since then. He’s always alone and always gawking at the women.”
The LBC was the Lavin-Bernick Center, what other schools call the University Center. “You said he’s blond. How else would you describe him?”
“He’s like . . . not distinctive in any way. Average height, not skinny, not fat, not athletic looking.”
“What about his hair, long, short . . .”
“Neat. That’s about all I can
say. But he carries a black backpack covered in yellow emogies. You know, those round faces you can put at the end of sentences in your e-mail to show you’re kidding or you’re sad. Seems kind of effeminate to me. I’d turn him down just for that. But it is a way to identify him. I’d be glad to ask around and see if anyone at school knows his name.”
“I’d appreciate that. Can you tell me anything else that would help me better understand who Betty is?”
Dee thought for a moment then said, “Well, she’s kind of paranoid about how the government is trying to spy on everybody. Not long ago she told me I should shut off the tracking function on my phone, like she did hers. Was she right? Are we all being watched?”
“I’d like to think not. But I don’t know any more about that than you do. Having it on gives your phone added functions and my thought is, if you have nothing to hide, why worry about it?” Realizing that Dee might take what she said the wrong way, Kit added. “I’m not saying Betty is trying to hide anything. Some people are just very protective of their privacy. Nothing wrong with that. Anything more you can think of?”
“Not at the moment.”
Kit dug in her bag and gave Dee her card. “Call me anytime.”
“Now what happens?”
“Any idea when Gator Willie’s opens?”
“Seven o’clock I think. You’re going over there?”
“Maybe one of the other employees saw her leave with someone after her shift on Thursday.”
“I doubt she’d ever allow herself to be picked up like that.”
“It’s still a visit I need to make.”
There was a rattle of metal outside. Dee glanced at the window. “Now there’s somebody you should talk to.”
Kit glanced at the window and saw a ladder being placed against the building.
“Who’s that?”
“Leo Silver, the maintenance guy. I’ve seen him a couple of times taking pictures of Betty with his phone when she wasn’t looking.”
“I’m going out there. You should probably stay here.”
Assassination at Bayou Sauvage Page 5