Peggy Sue Got Murdered

by Tess Gerritsen

  M. J. snatched one up and read it: Mayor Sampson's Bicentennial Ball. General tickets: $50. Contributor: $100. Inner Circle: $500.

  "Do you think Ed will help us out?" asked Adam.

  "I'll hound him to the grave if he doesn't."

  Adam laughed. "I'd say that's a pretty potent threat, coming from you."

  They stepped off the elevator. "Hardly," said M. J., still gazing down at the flyer.

  Inner circle tickets were $500 each and Isabel had two of them.

  "I'm not a threat to anyone," she muttered. Then she tossed the flyer into a trash can.

  The cook had laid out a lovely supper for them: Cornish hens glazed with raspberry sauce, wild rice, a bottle of wine chilling in the bucket. And candlelight, naturally. Everything, thought Adam, was perfect. Or should have been perfect.

  But it wasn't.

  He watched M. J. silently chase a sprig of parsley around her plate, and he wondered how many days, how many hours, before this woman-this fascinating, maddening woman-would be strolling out of his life. That she would leave, he had no doubt. It was only a matter of time. She was right, of course; the gap between their worlds was immense, perhaps unbridgeable. His world was Groton and Harvard, ski slopes and Surry Heights. Adam Dillingham Quantrell IV had known both his parents, had even known the names of his grandparents and their grandparents, had grown up versed in the history of his bloodlines. Mariana Josefina Ortiz, raised on the mean streets of South Lexington, had known only her mother's name. Her father would forever remain a mystery. Lacking any pedigree, she was, quite simply, what she'd made of herself.

  He liked the result.

  And he was perplexed by it.

  She was shoving a sliver of carrot around her plate now. Where was her appetite? With a sigh, she put down her fork and looked at him.

  "Thinking about Esterhaus again?" he asked.

  "And… everything, I guess."

  "Including us?"

  After a pause, she nodded.

  He picked up his wineglass and took a sip. She watched him, waiting for him to say something. It was unlike her to hold back words. Are we so uncomfortable with each other? he wondered.

  "It's not healthy for me," she said. "Staying here."

  He glanced at her scarcely touched meal. "At least you'd eat properly."

  "I mean, emotionally. I'm not used to counting on a man. It makes me feel like I'm up on stilts, tottering around. Waiting to fall. I mean, look at this." She waved at the elegant table setting, the flickering candles. "It's just not real to me."

  "Am I?"

  She looked directly at him. "I don't know."

  The fearless M. J. Novak , he thought with sudden understanding. Terrified of being loved.

  He pinched his own arm and said with a smile, "I seem real enough to myself."

  She didn't appreciate his humor. In fact, he couldn't get even the glimmer of a smile out of her. He leaned forward. "M. J.," he said. "If you always expect to be hurt, then that's what will happen."

  "No, it's the other way around. If you're ready for it, then you can't be hurt."

  Resignedly he sat back. "Well, that pretty much wraps up the future."

  She laughed-a sad, hollow sound. "See, Adam, I take one day at a time. Enjoy things while I can. I can enjoy this, being with you. But I'm going to ask you to promise something: When it's over, tell me. No BS, just the straight scoop. If I'm not what you want, if it's not working, tell me. I'm not crystal. I don't break."

  "Don't you?"

  "No." She picked up her wine and took a nonchalant sip. The truth was, he thought, that she had a heart as fragile as that wineglass, and she wouldn't let it show. It was beneath her dignity to be weak. To be human. She was convinced that one of these days he would hurt her.

  And maybe she's right.

  He pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. "Come on," he said.

  "Where?"

  "Upstairs. If this is a doomed affair, then we should make the most of it. While we can."

  She gave him a careless laugh and stood up. "While the sun shines," she said.

  "And if it doesn't work -"

  "We'll both be fine," she finished for him.

  They headed up the stairs, to his bedroom, and closed the door, shutting out the rest of the world. One day at a time, he thought as he watched her unbutton her clothes, watched the garments slide to the floor, one moment at a time.

  And what comes after is for tomorrow to decide.

  He took her in his arms, kissed her. He wanted to be gentle; she wanted to be fierce. As though, in making love, she was battling some inner demon, struggling against it and him, against even herself. Love and war, delight and despair, it was what he felt that night, making love to her.

  When it was over, when she'd fallen asleep in pure exhaustion, he lay awake beside her. He gazed around his darkened bedroom, saw the gleam of antique furniture, the vaulted ceiling. It comes between us, he thought. My wealth. My name. It scares her.

  And in a way, she scared him. There was too much fire, too many sparks in this Mariana Josefina. He thought of all the turmoil she'd brought into his life. In one short week she'd introduced him to dead bodies, street fights, and exploding houses. She'd forced him to confront his failure as a father and his guilt as a man of wealth. She intrigued him, infuriated him, delighted him. How would he ever fill the vacuum she'd leave behind?

  She whimpered in her sleep and turned towards him, burrowing against his chest.

  How could he keep this wild and crazy woman in his life? he wondered, holding her tightly.

  Maybe I can't.

  Ratchet was back from vacation, sporting a red sunburn and even redder mosquito bites. While the mosquitoes had found the pickings good, Ratchet, it seemed, had not.

  "One lousy fish," he said. "The poorest excuse for a trout I ever saw. I didn't know whether to cook it or put it in a bag of water for my kid's goldfish bowl. A whole damn week, and that's what I had to show for it. Lost three of my best lures, too. I tell you, the rivers up there are fished out. Totally fished out."

  "So how many did Beth catch?" asked M. J.

  "Beth?"

  "You know. Your wife."

  Ratched coughed. "Six," he mumbled. "Maybe seven."

  "Only seven?"

  "Okay, maybe it was more like eight. A statistical fluke."

  "Yeah, she's good at those flukes, isn't she?"

  Ratchet yanked his lab coat off the door hook and thrust his arms into the sleeves. "So how's it been here? Anything exciting happen?"

  "Not a thing."

  "Why do I bother asking?" Ratchet muttered. He went over to the in-box and fished out a pile of papers. "Look at all this stuff."

  "All yours," said M. J. "We left 'em for you."

  "Gee, thanks."

  "And you've got two dozen files on your desk, waiting for signatures."

  "Okay, okay. It's enough to keep a guy from ever going on vacation." He sighed and headed down the hall to his office.

  M. J. sat at her desk, listening to the familiar squeak of his tennis shoes moving down the hall. It was back to business as usual, she thought. The same old routine she had had for years. So why was she so depressed?

  She rose and poured another cup of coffee-her third this morning. She was turning into a caffeine junkie, a sugar junkie. A love junkie. Hopeless relationships-that was her specialty. She dropped back into her chair. If she could just stop thinking about Adam for a day, an hour, maybe she'd regain some control over her life. But he had become an obsession for her. Even now, she wondered what he was doing, whether he was sitting at his desk, missing her. Or was he like most other men she knew, able to separate the various parts of his life into neat little boxes, to be opened at the appropriate times? I need to learn that trick , she thought. But every time she opened a file, signed her name, those images of the night before would float through her head.

  They'd made love, slept a few hours, made love again.

  She'd
awakened with the sinking realization that things had careened way beyond her control. She wasn't going to be able to walk away from this one without hurting. To think that the affair had started off as nothing more than a lark, a fantasy. Now she could lack herself for getting into this fix. This addiction. This craving for the touch of him, the sight of him. She was as hooked as any junkie on a drug, as hooked as Nicos Biagi and Xenia Vargas had been.

  She loved him.

  She was going insane.

  M. J. grabbed a file from the stack on her desk, signed her name, and slapped the file shut again. She almost groaned when she heard those tennis shoes come squeaking back down the hall toward her office.

  Ratchet reappeared in her doorway. "Hey, M. J.," he said.

  "What?"

  "What the hell's this supposed to mean?" He read aloud from a lab slip. "'Results of mass and UV spec-trophotometry show following, noriquantitative: Narcotic present, levo-N-cyclobutylmethyl-6, 10-beta-dihydroxy class. Full identification pending.'" He looked up at her. "What is this gobbledygook?"

  "You must have one of my slips. The drug's Zestron-L."

  "Never heard of it."

  "Here, I'll take care of the report."

  "But it's got my name on it."

  A frightening thought suddenly occurred to M. J. "Who's the subject?"

  "Jane Doe."

  "Oh." M. J. sighed with relief. "Then that's mine."

  "No, it's my Jane Doe." He held the slip out to her. "See? There's my name."

  Frowning, M. J. took it. On the line next to authorizing physician was typed the name Bernard Ratchet, M.D. She scanned the Subject ID data. Name: unknown. Sex: female. Race: White. I.DJ: 372-3-27-B. Processing date: 3/27.

  A full week before her Jane Doe had rolled in the morgue doors.

  "Get me this file," she said.

  "Huh?"

  "Get me the file."

  "Whatever you say, mein Führer." Ratchet stalked away and returned a moment later to slap a folder on her desk. "There it is."

  M. J. opened the file. It was, indeed, one of Ratchet's cases. She had seen this file before; she remembered it now. This was the Jane Doe of the glorious red hair, the marble skin. The page from the central ID lab was clipped to the inside front flap, with a notice of a fingerprint match. The corpse's name was Peggy Sue Barnett. She had a police record: shoplifting, prostitution, public drunkenness. She was twenty-three years old.

  "Do we still have the body?" asked M. J.

  "No. There's the release authorization."

  M. J. glanced at the form. It was signed by Wheelock the day before, releasing the body to Greenwood Mortuary.

  "I called it a probable barbiturate OD," said Ratchet. "I mean, it seemed reasonable. There was a bottle of Fiorinal next to her."

  "Were barbs found in her tox screen?"

  "Just a trace."

  "No needles found on site? No tourniquet?"

  "Just the pills, according to the police report. That's why I assumed it was barbs. I guess I was wrong."

  "So was I," she said quietly.

  "What?"

  She reached for the telephone and dialed the police. It rang five times, then a voice answered, "Beamis, Homicide."

  "Lou? M. J. Novak. We've got another one here."

  "Another what?"

  "Zestron OD. But this one's different."

  She heard Beamis sigh. Or was that a yawn? "I'm real interested."

  "The victim's name is Peggy Sue Barnett. She was found in Bellemeade-a week before the others. And get this-she was set up to look like a barbiturate OD."

  "Are you going to tell me what is going on?" whined Ratchet.

  M. J. ignored him. "Lou," she said. "I'm going to stick my neck out on this one." She paused. "I'm calling it murder."

  13

  Beamis tossed the police file down on his desk and looked across at M. J. "Dead end, Novak. No motive. No witnesses. No signs of violence. Peggy Sue Barnett was a loner. We can't locate even a single relative or friend."

  "Someone must have known her."

  "No one who'll come forward." Beamis leaned back in his chair. "We're stuck. If it's murder, then someone's committed the perfect crime."

  "And chosen the perfect victim," said M. J. She looked at Shradick, who was hunched at his desk, making a ham sandwich disappear. "Vince? You talk to Greenwood Mortuary'?"

  "They've had no calls, and the burial's tomorrow. But someone did pay the expenses."

  "Who?"

  "Anonymous. Envelope stuffed with cash."

  M. J. shook her head in disbelief. "And you guys aren't chasing that?"

  "Why? Not a crime to pay for a woman's burial."

  "It shows that someone knew her. And cared about her. Don't you guys have anything?"

  "We know she lived out in Bellemeade," said Beamis. "Had an apartment on Flashner and Grove. We asked around the building, and you know what? No one even knew her name. They'd seen her come and go, but that was it. So much for witnesses."

  "How did she get the drug?"

  Beamis shrugged. "Maybe she bought it off Esterhaus. Or got a free sample in exchange for, uh, services."

  "Prostitution?"

  "She'd been busted for it before. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, pardon the double entendre."

  "So we're back to blaming Herb Esterhaus?"

  "I don't know who else to blame. It's a dead end for us."

  For Peggy Sue Barnett as well , thought M. J. She remembered the woman's flame-colored hair, her porcelain beauty, shrouded in the cold mist of the morgue drawer. Not the sort of looks that went unnoticed in this world. Surely there'd been friends, lovers? Men who'd known the pleasures of her company, if only for a night. Where were they now?

  A woman dies, and no one seems to notice. She thought about this as she walked through the police station. She thought about herself, wondered how many would notice her death, would come to her funeral. Ratchet, of course. Wheelock, out of duty. But there'd be no husband, no family, no giant mounds of flowers on the grave. We're alike, Peggy Sue and I. Whether by choice or by circumstance, we've made our way alone through life.

  She stopped at the elevators and punched the down button. Just as the floor bell rang, she heard a voice say behind her, "Well, speak of the devil."

  Turning, she saw her ex-husband emerge from the chiefs office. You wouldn't come to my funeral, either, she thought with a sudden dart of hostility.

  "My, what a nice scowl you're wearing today," said Ed.

  They both stepped into the elevator and the doors slapped shut. He was looking dapper as usual, not a scuff on his shiny Italian shoes. What had she ever seen in him? she wondered. Then she thought, morosely, What had he ever seen in her?

  "I got what you asked for," he said.

  "What?"

  "The name of the cop who arrested Esterhaus last year. You still want it, don't you?"

  "Who was it?"

  "The name was Ben Fuller, narcotics detail. A sergeant with eighteen years on the force. He filed the arrest report. Possession of three live marijuana plants."

  "Did Fuller also arrange the release?"

  "Nope. Feds did. They stepped in and pulled their ex-witness out of the fire. So you can drop the conspiracy angle. Fuller had nothing to do with it."

  "Can I see his Internal Affairs file?"

  "Won't do you any good."

  "Why not?"

  The elevator doors slid open. "Because Ben Fuller's dead," he said, and walked out.

  M. J. dashed after him into the first floor lobby. "Dead? How?"

  "Shot to death in the line of duty. He was a good cop, M. J. I've talked to his buddies. He had a wife, three kids, and a whole drawer full of commendations. So lay off the guy, okay? He was a hero. He doesn't deserve some broad with an attitude mucking up his memory." With that, Ed went out the front door.

  M. J. watched her ex-husband stride away down the sidewalk. A broad with an attitude. Is that what I am? she wondered.

/>   She stalked off to her car.

  Traffic was heavy on Dillingham, and she didn't have the patience to deal with it. Every red light, every idiot making a left turn, seemed to jog her irritation up another notch. By the time she got back to the morgue, she felt like a menace to the public. So I'm a broad with an attitude. So what? she thought as she went into her office. There she halted in amazement.

  Two dozen long-stemmed roses sat in a vase on her desk. "What the hell's this?"

  Ratchet stuck his head out of his office and called out sweetly: "So who's the new lover boy, Novak?"

  She slammed the door on his laughter. Then she sank into her chair and sat staring at the roses. They were gorgeous. They were blood red, the symbol of love, of passion.

  M. J. hated roses.

  Once, Ed had sent her roses, that very same color, just before he'd asked for a divorce.

  She dropped her head in her hands and wondered morbidly what sort of flowers Adam Quantrell would send to her funeral.

  Her dark mood lasted all afternoon, through the processing of a hit-in-the-crosswalk old lady, through hours of paper catch-up and court depositions. By the time she drove through Adam's stone gate that evening, she was good and ready for a warm hug and some pampering. Or at the very least, a stiff drink.

  What she found instead was Isabel's Mercedes parked in the driveway.

  M. J. got out of her car and stood for a moment by the Mercedes, gazing in at the leather upholstery, the kidskin gloves lying on the front seat. Then, in an even blacker mood, she went to the front door and rang the bell.

  Thomas opened the door and regarded her with surprise. "Oh dear! Did Mr. Q. neglect to give you a key, Dr. Novak?"

  M. J. cleared her throat. It had never occurred to her to simply walk in the door. After all, it wasn't her house. She was a guest and would always feel like a guest. "Well, yeah," she said. "I guess he did give me a key."

  Thomas stepped aside to usher her in.

  "I thought I should ring first," she added as he took her jacket.

  "Of course," he said. He reached into the closet for a hanger. "Mr. Q. hasn't arrived yet. But Miss Calderwood dropped by for a visit. She's in the parlor, if you'd care to join her for tea."