Kit’s house was modest, but comfortable-looking. However, Skip didn’t see the inside—Kit emerged as she was locking her car, wearing a nurse’s uniform and smoking a cigarette—an odd combination, Skip thought.
“Hey, there. You want me?”
“Too late, huh? I need to ask you a question or two.”
“I could take a break about ten-thirty—want to meet me at work?”
She’s awfully cooperative. I wonder why?
Nevertheless, Skip agreed to turn up at the South Louisiana Medical Center, a private hospital across Magazine, in the Irish Channel.
She went back to the office and called Jimmy Dee, now at his office. “I think what it is, Dee-Dee, is Sheila’s never been around men that much. She doesn’t know what to make of having an uncle who’s a daddy and so, brace yourself, she says she’s afraid of you.”
“What? Mild-mannered Uncle Jimmy Dee?”
“Well, she says it’s because you’re gay, which apparently her mother told her, but frankly I think that was just a way of getting into it. It does develop, though, that she has a homophobic boyfriend.”
“A what? She’s only a baby.”
“1 think at her age talking to someone in class qualifies him as your boyfriend. We do need to do a little education around being gay, though. I could do that if you like.”
“No, I think I should. Otherwise, it’s like it’s still in the closet or something.”
“The hell of it is, I know this is hard to take, but so far as I can tell, basically she wants her mama.”
“She’s got you,” he said hopefully.
“Poor unlucky child, if that’s the best she can do. But unfortunately it is and that’s part of the problem. I think it’s the whole thing she’s contending with—strange city, strange adults, and a whole lot of grief for everything she’s lost. She’s going to get through it, though. I even see running away as a good sign. By doing that, she told us how bad things are for her.”
“Well, what are we going to do about it?” He sounded hopeless.
“Take her to McDonald’s, for one thing.”
“Do what? And get the social services on our backs for child abuse? Why don’t we just beat her while we’re at it?”
“A tiny trick I learned from Darryl. He’s got quite a little way with kids.”
“I like that dude. I think he’s okay.”
“High praise, indeed.”
“And what does her tininess think about him?”
“He’s got quite a little way with everybody.”
There was certainly no accounting. Why on earth did Jimmy Dee find Darryl less threatening than Steve? When Steve was around, the two of them squared off like bull elephant seals in mating season.
It’s something male
, she thought.
Something they can smell.
They know something we don’t, but they don’t know what they know. Maybe he likes Darryl because he’s not threatening. He doesn’t really want me and Dee-Dee knows it.
It was a good theory. She checked her watch and headed for her meeting with Kit.
The hospital was old, dark, almost spooky. Decorative plaster cornices bespoke better days. The ceilings, especially in the corridors, seemed thirty feet high. It smelled of Pine-Sol. Skip found it thoroughly depressing.
But to her surprise, she was ushered into a small corner office, light, cheerful, and furnished with plants and photos. “I’m a supervisor here,” Kit explained. “So I get one perk and this is it.”
For the first time, Skip really looked at her. She was a handsome woman, the sort who might have been called “raw-boned” in another era. She was tall and strong, slender without, somehow, that being an issue. Her bones were big and her body narrow. She had brown hair, which she wore carelessly pinned up, Katharine Hepburn style, and hazel eyes that looked as if they could laugh. Her hands were certainly a nurse’s hands, capable hands, with the nails cut blunt and short. She wore only one silver ring, twisted into an ankh. She had a fast metabolism, Skip thought, and probably ran on nervous energy. She was over forty, though how much over it Skip couldn’t have said. She could have been from New England, or the Midwest perhaps; definitely not New Orleans—her bones were not delicate enough; she was too earthy. If she had tattoos or piercings, they didn’t show and wouldn’t have looked right.
She looked at her watch, setting a certain tone. “You’re wondering how well I knew Geoff?”
“Sure, among other things.”
“He came to our TOWN dinners, but he didn’t talk much. I knew about him mostly, through Lenore, who’s become almost…” She hesitated, then shrugged. “I may as well say it—almost like a daughter to me.”
Skip was pretty sure there was more to her relationship with Geoff, but now wasn’t the time to push it.
“Ah. Then tell me about Lenore. How did you get to know her?”
“Online, originally. Then we were in a group together and sort of discovered mutual interests.”
“May I ask what sort of interests?”
If Kit were the type who could blush, she might have. As it was, she merely looked caught out. “Caitlin, I guess. I feel so terribly sorry for her, having to raise that child alone. I worry, I really do. And Caitlin’s such a sweet little girl; so sunny.”
“What kind of group were you and Lenore in?”
“Oh, just a sort of women’s thing.”
“Social?”
“You could say that.” She looked acutely uncomfortable.
“You said ‘were’ as if the group isn’t still meeting.”
“Did I? Well.”
“But you are.”
“Well, Lenore and I’ve become terribly good friends.”
“Who else is in it?”
“Oh, dear, I really can’t remember.” She looked at her watch again. “Does this really have to do with Geoff?”
“I was wondering—why do you worry about Lenore? Does that have to do with Geoff?”
Kit busied herself with papers on her desk. “I suppose you could say that, yes. Or it did. I used to worry that she’d marry him, just to be with somebody.” She looked up, straight at Skip. “You know, Geoff just wasn’t the sort you’d marry. He lived with his parents, after all.”
“You couldn’t see him taking care of a baby?”
“He was a baby himself.” It came out with a lot of vehemence. “Lenore needs somebody strong. That poor girl, all the things she’s been through… her mother’s dead and her dad disowned her, did you know that? For being a single mother. He’s a Christian, I guess, and an unbelievably nasty piece of work. I just feel so sorry for her.”
She looked off in the distance and when her eyes met Skip’s again, it was as if Kit read her mind. She made a rueful little snorting noise. “I should mind my own business, I guess.”
“Oh, Miss Brazil. May I see you for a second?” A young black woman, her hair in dozens of tiny braids, poked her head in.
Kit rose with a graceful sweep, not even putting her hands on the desk for balance. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said as she left, not bothering to turn her head toward Skip.
Skip stood and strolled to the window. Casually, so that it would look as if she were simply bored, she turned to face Kit’s desk and scanned it quickly. An ordinary desk calendar lay open-faced, inviting riffling. But there was no need—something intriguing was written on that day, Friday. “Full moon,” said the entry. “Outside, p.u. Suby 7
P.M.
”
That was so good Skip turned back a few days, to Tuesday. That day, too, Kit had had a date at 7
P.M.
On that page, she had drawn a star with a circle around it—the pentagram Skip had seen on the altar at Lenore’s. Just doodling, probably, but it gave Skip the willies. She turned the calendar back to Friday.
She sat down, trying to make sense of it. In Satanic cults, children were sacrificed, weren’t they? Little Caitlin seemed perfectly healthy, but what about Geoff? Usually cults had men in them—if this one didn’t, maybe that meant something. Kit had been pretty harsh on the subject of Lenore’s father, and not all that lenient on Geoff.
But that was ridiculous. A ritual murder accomplished by the pushing over of a ladder was too lame to contemplate.
On the other hand, who knew what these people were about? Perhaps there was some strange initiation.
Maybe Lenore was required to seduce a man and then kill him, black-widow style.
Maybe Geoff knew something he wasn’t supposed to.
Maybe he threatened Kit’s job, or Lenore’s.
Skip shrugged off a shiver.
A little paranoia goes with the territory, but let’s not get carried away.
Kit came back pushing up her sleeves, efficiency personified. “Look, I sound weird, like I’m fixated on Lenore, and I guess I am. I guess, basically, I’m a mother in search of a child to take care of, and she’s satisfying that need right now—she and Caitlin together.”
She pushed back a lock of hair that had come loose. “I never had children because my husband didn’t want to. I didn’t go to medical school—which I also wanted to do—because I put him through school, then helped him get his business started. We had a deal—I’d support him for a while, then he’d support me. Only I never got to collect—we broke up over the child issue. I got married again, but by then… I don’t know, maybe it was too late. Anyway, I’m divorced again.” She shrugged. “So I need something to nurture and Lenore’s it for right now. I guess if she’d married Geoff, I’d have had three children instead of two. I don’t know, maybe I’m as crazy as anyone in a certain section of this fine institution.”
Maybe, Skip thought. But one thing was painfully obvious—this was a terribly unhappy woman; a woman who didn’t know where to turn to get out of the doldrums.
I wonder if she has a boyfriend.
It doesn’t matter—whoever he is, he isn’t enough.
“I have to get back to work.”
“Could I ask you one more question? Neetsie told me where she works, but I forgot. Do you happen to know?”
“Sure. All Systems Go.” At Skip’s blank look, she said, “Are you sure she told you?”
“I guess not. Maybe it was Suby.”
“Well, it’s not classified information. It’s a computer store.”
On the way back (driving being Skip’s favorite time to philosophize), she thought about the irony of Geoff, the computer whiz, working in a video store, while his sister the actress spent her days flogging computers.
Right before lunch, Steve called. “How’s everything?”
“Just awful. Sheila ran away last night.”
“Sheila?” He couldn’t seem to place her.
“Dee-Dee’s kid.”
“Oh, sure. What’s the matter with me?”
“I mean, she really ran away. We didn’t find her until two o’clock.”
“In the morning? You were up till two in the morning?”
“Three-thirty, actually. We had to bribe her to come home by taking her for a burger.”
“Yikes, I hope you didn’t have to go to McDonald’s. Better to leave her to freeze.”
“Steve!”
“Hey, I’m kidding. Joke, okay? I didn’t mean anything.”
“Sorry. I’m sleep-impaired.”
“We’ll talk tonight.”
But she couldn’t, of course. She had to spy on a bunch of cultists.
Anyway, she didn’t want to talk. Bad news could wait.
She hung up feeling snappish. He had seemed blithely unconcerned about Sheila; in fact seemed to have forgotten her entire existence.
She was angry at Steve anyway, and this didn’t help. She couldn’t help thinking a real man would show some concern for children.
To which the corollary was all too obvious:
Like Darryl
.
She called Wizard, the TOWN sysop. “Oh, yeah, I’ve been meaning to phone you.”
“Did you talk to your lawyers?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll send you the stuff. You knew I’d have to, didn’t you?”
“I knew you would if I subpoenaed it. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”
“Yeah, well, if I’d had my way, it would have.”
Is this something I need to know? Why is this man so irritating?
“Could you send it today, please? Federal Express?”
“Are you going to pay for it?’
“If you like.”
Skip rang off.
Self-important bastard
.
Then:
I’m evil today
.
It was a phrase she’d picked up from Cindy Lou, whose grandmother used to say she “got evil” when she reached menopause. “So far as I could tell,” Cindy Lou had said, “it’s like galloping negativity. You don’t like anything or anybody and you snap at whoever you run into.”
Apparently more things than menopause could cause it. Lack of sleep, for one.
The phone rang again. “Goddamn it.”
“Hi, it’s Layne.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“You don’t sound that glad to hear from me.”
“Sorry. What can I do for you?”
“It’s what I can do for you. I’ve got a present for you.”
“Information, I hope.”
“It’s this great piece of software I designed. You can track who posted where and when and how many times and all kinds of neat stuff. Sort of a detective bureau on a disk. So you can manipulate your computer data just like other stuff—like putting it on three-by-five cards.”
“Wait a minute. You mean I could figure out what somebody did in a given session on the TOWN? If they posted in a lot of different conferences?”
“Sure.”
“Would it tell me when? Like what order it all happened in?”
“Elementary, my dear.”
She was warming toward him. She could track Geoff and Lenore and anyone else she wanted to.
“So shall I come over tonight and install it?”
“I don’t think that’s the way to do it.”
“Hey, I’m gay. Did I mention that?”
She laughed. “It’s not that. It’s just that until the case is over we need to maintain a professional relationship.”
“Huh?”
She kept quiet while the penny dropped.
“Hold it. Hey, hold it. I think I just got it. I’m a suspect—is that what you’re saying?”
“Like the man said, I suspect everyone.”
“I can’t get over it. I’m a suspect.” He laughed for about a minute and a half, making her feel evil again.
“Listen, thanks for the offer, but maybe I should come to your house.”
“I’ve got a better idea. You live in the Quarter, don’t you?”
How the hell does he know where I live
. “Let’s meet for coffee. That place on Royal Street with the funny name and the little art gallery. You know, it’s…”