Mourning Gloria

by Susan Wittig Albert

  But he was gone, and I focused my attention on what I had come for. I checked the front door, which was securely locked, and rapped and called until I was sure that if someone was home, she wasn’t going to answer. Then I made a quick tour around the perimeter, checking the windows and noticing that the blinds were all drawn tightly, as if to keep out prying eyes. The back door was locked, too, but there was no blind and I could see into a small kitchen. It was empty and tidy, with a tea towel draped across a rack, a geranium on the kitchen windowsill, a pair of copper-bottomed pans hung over the stove. I repeated my knocking and calling, but the place had a hollow sound and nobody answered.

  I turned and looked out across the backyard. There was a white-painted lawn swing under a large cedar elm, and a narrow border of zinnias and marigolds blooming bravely against the ratty-looking hedge that grew between Jessica’s house and the jerk’s backyard. In a small, square vegetable garden set into the grassy turf, carrots, green beans, and peas were flourishing. A pair of cardinals, male and female, were sharing a splashy bath in a birdbath beside a pink-blooming rosebush. A lovely, peaceful scene.

  I went to the hedge and peered over. The jerk’s place looked like a wrecking yard, with shoals of beer cans, mounds of rusted vehicle parts, an abandoned camper top, a pile of used tires, and a heap of junky detritus piled up against a small, tin-roofed shed. The house was of the same design and vintage as the one Jessica lived in, but not nearly as well kept up. The screens were torn or missing, the door to the fruit cellar under the house was boarded up, and the back door looked as if it had been kicked in once or twice. The house could do with a fresh coat of paint, too.

  But now that the jerk had driven off, the neighborhood was very quiet, only the warbling, melodic chatter of a talkative mockingbird breaking the silence. I turned and contemplated Jessica’s back door for a moment, weighing possibilities and options, then went up the steps. Criminal trespass in a habitation is a Class A misdemeanor in Texas, punishable by as much as a year in the county hoosegow and a fine of up to four thousand dollars in cold, hard cash—probably a fair price to pay for breaking into somebody’s house and getting caught at it.

  But I could argue that I had reason to believe that one of the occupants might be in that house, sick, injured, or worse. It was a standard defense against trespass, but in this case it would probably work, since I had explicitly stated my concern to the chief of police, the county sheriff, and the editor of the local newspaper. My worry was on the record, which would definitely count for something.

  The back door was securely locked, but the window beside it wasn’t. Naughty-naughty, I thought as I raised the old-fashioned wooden sash and climbed into the kitchen. Naughty of me to come in this way, naughty of Jessica and her roommate to make it so easy. Good thing I wasn’t a burglar or a rapist or somebody equally nasty.

  The house was small, and a couple of minutes inside were enough for me to see all there was to see. Kitchen, living-dining, one bath, two bedrooms. One bed neatly made, the other not. The neatly made bed was in what I assumed was Jessica’s bedroom, judging from the books (agriculture and journalism texts) on the bookshelves. I was surprised to feel the relief that flooded through me—I must’ve been expecting to find a battered body or an ugly bloodstain on the floor. I hadn’t. Whatever had happened to Jessica, it didn’t look as if it had happened here.

  There was an answering machine on the kitchen counter, and the message light was blinking. Being thorough, I checked it. The first message was from Jessica’s roommate.

  “Hey, Jessie, it’s me, Amanda. Just to let you know that Steve and I are staying an extra few days. Weather’s good, sex is better.” A giggle. “Listen, I’ve lost my cell phone. If you need me, here’s Steve’s number.” She rattled it off. “Hope you’re having a good time all by yourself.”

  I jotted down Steve’s cell number, although there was nothing in the call that would help me track down Jessica, and checked the time stamp on the message. It had been left on Monday at 2 p.m. and was still a “new” message, which meant that Jessica hadn’t picked it up. Which suggested that she hadn’t come back here on Monday. Whatever had happened to her happened before she got home. I thought of the jerk next door. Or before she’d had a chance to listen to her messages.

  The second call, Monday at 5 p.m., was more intriguing. A male voice, thin, strained. “I just don’t get why you’re avoiding me, Jessie. You know I’d never hurt you, not for the world, and we both know it’s over. We ought to try to get some closure. We’ll feel better if we do. I will, anyway. Trust me, you will, too. Let’s get together. Real soon.” The last two words seemed almost ominous, as if they held a threat.

  My skin was prickling. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. I played the message again. Same prickle, same puzzle. I knew this man—who was he? It sounded as if he was pleading for a final meeting to tie up the ends of a broken relationship. And then I happened to glance at the little screen on the phone. A number appeared there—the caller’s phone number, a local number. I copied it down, and went on with the playback. There were several hang-up calls—Hark, maybe?—and a third message from me, this morning. That was it. I looked around, thinking that there was nothing more to be learned here. I locked the kitchen window and was preparing to go out the ordinary way, through the back door, when the phone rang.

  One, twice, three times. I hesitated, waiting for the answering machine to pick up. Jessica, maybe? Calling to see if Amanda had come home?

  Jessica’s voice gave the usual “leave a number” instruction and a bright female voice chirped, “Hey, Jessica, it’s Zoe Morris. You know that girl we were talking about when you stopped by the Hort Center on Monday? The one Larry Wolff gave the key to? Well, I found out her last name—Graham—and her address. She lives in Hill Country Villa, Unit 1, Apartment 204.” She gave the street address, then repeated it more slowly, and said good-bye.

  File it under “Small World,” I thought. As it happens, I know Zoe Morris. She had worked for Donna at Mistletoe Farm the previous summer and had become an occasional customer at the shop. I wasn’t sure what her phone message had to do with anything, but I went to the machine and replayed it, copying the information on a scrap of paper. Hill Country Villa was a new, exclusive apartment complex on Sam Houston Drive, on the east side of campus, an upscale place for young singles with plenty of money. If Jessica was looking for a new apartment, the Villa didn’t seem like the kind of place she could afford.

  I let myself out, locking the door behind me, and went to the car, where I sat for a few moments, staring at the house next door and wondering if the Harley jerk whose property looked like a wrecking yard had anything to do with Jessica’s disappearance. After a few moments, I pulled my attention away. I wasn’t going to get anywhere guessing about the neighbor.

  I glanced at the list I had made the night before. The trailer, A-Plus Auto Parts, the sheriff’s office, Jessica’s house.

  Next, I needed to see Lucy LaFarge, who had lived in the trailer until Scott Sheridan kicked her and her roommate out.

  I didn’t phone ahead, because my experience as a lawyer had taught me that certain questions are better asked face-to-face and that I’m more likely to get true answers when the person I’m asking doesn’t have time to think up lies. I put the car in gear and headed down the hill.

  North Brazos is a short side street west of the campus near the Horticulture Center. It’s an older residential area with a hodgepodge of apartment buildings and houses built shoulder to shoulder on a narrow street lined with pecan trees and live oaks that lean protectively over the sidewalks. This side of campus is almost entirely rental, with the constant stream of the traffic you see in student areas: skateboards, in-lines, scooters, bicycles, motorbikes, people, and dogs, some leashed, some loose.

  Around the corner on Matagorda are a pizza parlor, a video rental shop, and a Wi-Fi coffee shop, where the customers stare into their laptops or play games on their iPhone
s while they sip their coffee. Most are young, dressed in unisex shorts and T-shirts, both male and female sporting ponytails and various earrings and nose rings, almost all outfitted with earbuds. Some of the students are as old as I am or older, though. That’s the thing about college campuses these days: the student body is made up of people from their late teens into late middle age and beyond. McQuaid had a sixty-eight-year-old retired cop in one of his classes last term, and a ninety-year-old great-grandmother recently lined up with the twentysomethings to get her diploma.

  The apartment building at 101 North Brazos turned out to be an older two-story unit, flamingo pink stucco with a tile roof and pseudo-Spanish wrought iron gates, flanked by spiky yuccas that had snagged McDonald’s discards, newspapers, beer cans, and a pair of pink panties. The building was constructed in a U around a center square that had at some point contained a swimming pool, now filled in and featuring waves of tired-looking grass and a cresting surf of litter. This was not a high-class place.

  A row of key-lock mailboxes was displayed on the entryway wall. I cruised along it, looking, until I hit pay dirt. The words LaFarge/Wolff, 210 were handprinted on a card taped to the box. Well, well, lucky me. The two former renters of Scott Sheridan’s trailer were still sufficiently together to share a mailbox.

  Two-ten was located on a narrow balcony that ran in front of all the second-story apartments, motel-style. The dirty purple door had at some point in its life been yellow, and the flaking paint gave it a pocked look. The wide window to the right of the door was covered by a dark green drape, and a girl’s battered bicycle was padlocked to the balcony railing. The doorbell was crisscrossed with tape, so I lifted the tarnished knocker and rapped, waited a brief moment, and rapped again. A moment later, the door opened on a chain.

  “Yeah?” The girl wasn’t much over twenty, with dark curly hair, a perky, freckled nose, and wide-spaced brown eyes.

  “Hi. My name is China Bayles. Are you Lucy?”

  “That’s me. Lucy.” Her voice was perky, too. “What’s up?”

  I hadn’t been sure just how I was going to handle this. I still wasn’t. But she seemed friendly enough, and I might get more information if I told the truth. “I’m looking for a friend,” I said. “Jessica Nelson. Did she stop by to talk to you?”

  “The reporter from the Enterprise?” The door opened a little wider. The girl was wearing cutoffs and a clingy V-necked red top that displayed an attractive cleavage. Her legs were long and tanned, her feet bare. “Yeah, sure. She was here. She’s writing a story about a place I used to live. It burned down last weekend.”

  “She was here on Monday, maybe?” I hazarded.

  “Right. Monday afternoon. She caught me after my hort class.”

  “Great,” I said. “Listen, Lucy, I think you might be able to help me. Mind if I come in and visit for a few minutes? I won’t take up much of your time.”

  “I guess,” she said with a shrug. “If you want to.” If I’d been her, I might’ve been a little more careful who I let into my apartment, but she unhooked the chain and opened the door.

  The air in the small living room was heavy with tobacco smoke, a couple of overflowing ashtrays scattered here and there, but beneath the tobacco I caught a whiff of marijuana. Scott Sheridan had been right about that, anyway. The room was furnished with a sagging sofa and chair, a battered coffee table, a television, a couple of brick-and-board bookcases, and a desk and chair. On the desk was a laptop computer, and above it, on the wall, were several large photos of plants. The computer was on, the monitor displaying a word processing program and a document. It looked like I’d caught her working on a class paper.

  Lucy went to the window and opened the drape. “Have to close this when I’m on the laptop,” she said. “The light glares in the monitor.” She nodded at the sofa. “Wanna sit down?”

  “Thanks.” I sat. There was a full ashtray on the table in front of me. Mixed with the cigarette butts, I saw what was left of one joint. At least.

  Lucy folded herself into a chair, bare legs pulled up beneath her. “So what was it you wanted to know about this reporter?” She frowned. “She was on the up-and-up, wasn’t she?”

  “Oh, definitely,” I said. “She’s working on an assignment for her editor.” I started with something simple, just to get her talking. “What time on Monday was she here?”

  “After my hort class.” She wrinkled her nose, nodding in the direction of the computer. “Research paper’s due tomorrow, and I’m just getting started.” She followed my glance at the photos. “Those are the plants I’m writing about.”

  The plant photo nearest me pictured a remarkably vigorous specimen of Cannabis. The photo next to it was a full-throated blue morning glory. The one above that was wormwood; next to it, salvia. “Let me guess,” I said. “Your paper is on psychoactive plants. Marijuana, artemisia, Ipomoea violacea, Salvia divinorum.”

  She straightened, surprised. “Hey,” she said admiringly. “You’re good. How’d you know those Latin names? I mean, I don’t even know them, and I’m writing this paper.”

  I didn’t want to tell her that I was giving a talk to the Pecan Springs Garden Club on the topic—that would probably have made her laugh. Instead, I said, in a careless tone, “It’s just one of my areas of interest, you might say.”

  She looked down at my Thyme and Seasons tote bag and the light dawned. “Oh, my gosh—you’re China Bayles! You own that herb shop over on Crockett, across from the Farmers’ Market.” With a knowing grin and a glance at the wall, she added, “That’s why psychoactive plants are in your ‘area of interest,’ I suppose. I’ll bet you have most of these plants in your shop.”

  “Not all of them.” I grinned back. “My interest in psychoactives is purely academic.” Pointedly, I looked down at the ashtray. I didn’t want to have to say no to a joint offered in the spirit of friendly camaraderie, or tell her that I wasn’t dealing in something she might want to buy.

  “ ‘Purely academic,’” she repeated with a chuckle. She pushed a pile of magazines off an ottoman onto the floor and stretched out her legs. The soles of her feet were dirty, but her pretty toenails were painted bright red. “That’s what Dr. Laughton always says at the beginning of a class. All this shit is purely academic. Of course,” she added confidingly, “that’s his story.” Her attitude toward me seemed to have changed subtly. I had the feeling that she thought that the herb business—and particularly our shared interest in psychoactive plants—made us sisters under the skin.

  “You’re in one of Dr. Laughton’s classes?” I asked.

  “I was. Last spring. Directed study.” She eyed me. “You know him, huh?”

  I nodded, leaning forward. We were getting pretty far off-topic here, and I needed to bring us back. “Look, Lucy. Here’s the problem. Jessica Nelson—the reporter who came to see you—has disappeared. Nobody knows where she is, and I’m trying to track her down. I came here because I knew she wanted to ask you some questions about the fire in the trailer where you used to live.”

  “Disappeared?” Lucy asked, puzzled. “You mean, like, you don’t know where she is? Like, nobody’s seen her?”

  I nodded. “That’s right. So far as I’ve been able to figure out, you might be the last person she talked to.” I paused. “She did interview you, didn’t she?”

  A pair of hairy, half-naked boy-men, running and shouting, thudded past the apartment window, followed by a barking dog. The balcony rumbled with their heavy footfalls.

  Lucy got up and closed the curtain again, and the room fell into a green-tinted dimness. “God, I hate that noise,” she muttered. “Drives me crazy. One of the things I liked about the trailer was that it was quiet.” She sat down again. “Yeah, sure, she was here. She interviewed me about the place that burned. She wasn’t the first, though. The cops were here on Sunday.”

  “Sheriff Blackwell?”

  “No, some deputy. Clyde somebody-or-other. Really cute. He asked me if I knew of anybody who
might’ve got into the trailer after we moved out. Maybe somebody I’d loaned a key to.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I never loaned my key to anybody. When we moved out, I gave it to the landlord. After Larry and I got this place, I never went back to the trailer.”

  “Larry?” I asked, pretending not to know.

  “My roommate. Larry Wolff. We rented the trailer together. That’s his room, back there.” She nodded in the presumed direction of a bedroom.

  I smiled. “Boyfriend?”

  “Sort of, sometimes.” She fished through the litter on the table beside her and found a package of Salems and a lighter. “More like good friends, really, with sex when we feel like it.” I would’ve blushed to say something like that. She didn’t. “It’s an open relationship,” she added, lighting a cigarette and blowing out a cloud of blue smoke. “I mean, like, we have other friends.” She smiled dreamily. “We aren’t possessive.”

  I watched her smoke and thought about something I had read recently about menthol additives in cigarettes. Menthol (made synthetically or derived from peppermint or other mint oil) makes the smoker’s throat feel cooler and reduces the cough reflex. People who smoke menthol cigarettes can inhale deeper and hold the smoke in longer. Makes it harder to quit, researchers say.

  I went back to the subject. “So you liked being out in the country?”

  “Yeah, it was kinda nice. But I don’t have a car, so if Larry wasn’t around, I was stuck. There’s a lot more commotion here, but I’m close enough to the campus to ride my bike or walk.” She hesitated, her face darkening. “It’s so awful about that girl, you know? The one who burned to death in that fire, I mean.” She shuddered. “Saturday night, wasn’t it?”