“I do business with a lot of those
dudes.
Honest, I don’t mean to be uncooperative, but I don’t like being put on the spot.”
I was watching him, fascinated, because he’d started to perspire. I’d never really seen that, a man breaking out in a sweat while he talked. I said, “All right. Try this. Let’s just talk about you. Were you intimate with her?”
“Swoozie would have killed me.”
“You never made it with Charisse?”
“I’d rather not answer that.”
“Which means yes.”
He paused, taking out a handkerchief to mop at a trickle of sweat running down the side of his face.
“George?”
“Okay, yes, but that’s just between us. If it ever got out, my marriage would be over. Swoozie thinks I was a virgin. I told her she was the first. She hated Charisse. All the girls did.”
“I’m listening.”
“I was kind of nerdy. You know the type—smart and earnest and inexperienced. I’d pretend I’d made out. The guys’d be talking about sex and I’d act like I knew what they meant when I didn’t have a clue. Then Charisse came along and she was really nice to me. I liked her—I mean that sincerely—so when she offered to, you know, I just figured what the hell, no harm was ever going to come of it. I felt better about myself after that, a lot more confident.”
“How many times?”
“Three. Swoozie and I had been dating since we were kids. I knew we’d get married and then I’d never have a chance to be with anyone else. I didn’t want to live my whole life only knowing one girl.”
“And afterwards?”
“I wasn’t sorry I’d done it, but I was scared Swoozie would find out. I already had a job lined up with her dad.”
“You must have been relieved when Charisse disappeared.”
“Well, hey, sure. I’ll admit that, but so were a lot of guys, including Mr. Clean.”
I smiled. “Mr. Clean?”
“Sure. Cornell. We called him that because he worked for his dad and his hands were always dirty. He used to scrub ’em with lye soap, but it never did any good.”
My smile had faded because I’d blocked out his explanation and tuned into what he’d actually said. “Cornell was screwing Charisse?”
“Sure. Justine was holding out for marriage. She came up from nothing. And I mean her family was for shit—”
“I know about that,” I said, cutting him off.
“She saw Cornell as the answer to her prayers. She wasn’t about to put out unless he married her.”
I thought about that. “I did hear Charisse had the hots for him.”
“Oh, sure. She was also jealous of Justine. Compared to her life, Justine’s already looked better, so she got competitive.”
“And Justine knew about this?”
“Oh, no. No, no. Charisse knew better. After all, she was living at Justine’s. She wasn’t about to get herself thrown out on the street.”
“You’re telling me Cornell was in the same jeopardy you were.”
“Big time. Even more so. He was everybody’s hero— scholastics, sports, student government, you name it. We all looked up to him.”
“Who else knew about this, aside from you?”
“Adrianne, I guess. She walked in on ’em once over at the Tuley-Belle. That’s how she found out.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she told me.”
“Why? Were you a close friend of hers?”
“No, not really. We were in the same church youth group. We went on a weekend retreat and I could see she was upset. I asked and she told me what was going on. She thought she should talk to our pastor, but I disagreed. I said it wasn’t her job to save Cornell’s soul. He was a big boy and he could work it out for himself.”
I arrived at Felicia’s house in Creosote at precisely 7:00 that Wednesday night. Cars were lined up at intervals along the darkened street. I didn’t think I could manage to parallel park in Dolan’s tank so I was forced to leave his car around the corner and walk back. Cornell’s white pickup truck was parked in front of the house, behind Justine’s dark Ford sedan. The moon had been reduced to the size of a fingernail paring. The air was dry and cold. The usual wind whiffled through the trees, making the shaggy palms sway, fronds rustling like rats running through an ivy patch. Lights shone from every room of Felicia’s small house. Despite her admonition, I’d brought a dense chocolate cake in a pink bakery box.
A neighbor answered the door, introducing herself while relieving me of the box, which she carried to the kitchen. I stood for a moment and surveyed the room. I counted eight flower arrangements, about half of them containing leftover Easter lilies. Felicia had dimmed the lights, using votives and candles to illuminate the rooms. The effect was nice, but the air had been warmed to a feverish temperature. I suppose the gathering could have been called a wake, though there was certainly no corpse present. Perhaps “visitation” was the better term. That’s how Felicia had referred to it.
On a purely self-centered note, I hadn’t thought I’d need to pack my illustrious all-purpose dress. That long-sleeve black garment is tailor-made for such occasions, but how could I have known? Cheap shit that I am, earlier in the day I’d ducked into a Goodwill thrift store, where I’d found a pair of serviceable black wool slacks and a short black jacket of another fabric altogether. I’d also bought preowned black flats and a pair of (new) black panty hose. My shoulder bag was brown, probably a fashion faux pas given the rest of my ensemble, but it couldn’t be helped. I’d looked better in my day, but I’d also looked a lot worse.
I had no way of guessing how many people had come and gone in the hours before my arrival, but the number of mourners I saw was embarrassingly small. I wouldn’t have referred to them as “mourners,” either. They came closer to being talkers, Nosy Parkers, and consumers of free food. Clearly some of those assembled were Pudgie’s relatives. I could tell because they all looked faintly surprised he hadn’t been shot to death in the process of an armed robbery. I caught sight of Cornell talking to his sister, but both avoided eye contact, and I got the impression neither was eager to talk to me. I didn’t see Justine, and the rest of those gathered were total strangers, except for Felicia, who was standing in the kitchen talking to a fellow I’d never seen before. I’d hoped to see George Baum, to whom I’d given the address before I’d left the car lot. Maybe he didn’t want to risk running into Cornell, having tattled on him.
Since I didn’t recognize anyone except people who didn’t seem to want to talk to me, I crossed to the buffet table on the far side of the room. Felicia hadn’t fibbed about the copious amounts of food folks had brought. There was every kind of casserole known to man, platters of cold cuts, crackers and cheeses, chips and dips, plus an assortment of cakes, pies, and cookies. A big pressed-glass punch bowl had been filled with coral liquid that looked suspiciously like Hawaiian Punch. There was one lone bottle of white zinfandel. I unscrewed the top and filled a clear plastic cup to the brim, then drank it down an inch so it wouldn’t look like I was hogging more than my share.
I moved through the smattering of people, hoping to corner Adrianne so the two of us could have a chat. I saw Cornell go out to the front yard to grab a cigarette, so at least I didn’t have to worry about him. I drifted through the living room and into the kitchen. Felicia passed me with a plate of cookies in hand. I touched her arm and said, “How’re you doing?”
Her red hair was pulled away from her face. “I’m all right for now. I think the hard part comes later when everyone goes home. I’ll try to catch you in a bit. I have to get back with this.”
“Have you seen Adrianne?”
“I think I saw her go out there,” she said. “Cedric would have been glad you came.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it,” I said, and she was gone.
I set my wine cup on the counter and pushed the kitchen screen open. Adrianne was on the back porch, sitting on the top step. I took a seat beside her, my shoulder bag between us. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. This depresses me, that’s all.”
“I have a question for you.”
“Geez, would you give it up already? This is hardly the time.”
“You can talk to me or you can talk to the cops. Take your pick.”
“Oh hell. What do you want? I’m sick of this business.”
“So am I. Unfortunately, it isn’t over.”
“It is as far as I’m concerned. So ask me and get it over with. I’m about to go home.”
“Did you know Cornell was fooling around with Charisse?”
She looked at me sharply and then she looked away. She was quiet for a long time, but I decided to wait her out. Finally, she said, “Not at first.”
“And then what?”
“Do we really have to talk about this? That was eighteen years ago.”
“I hear you were at the Tuley-Belle and walked in on them.”
“Thank you, George Baum. If you knew the answer, why’d you ask?”
“Because I wanted to hear it from you. Come on. Just tell me what happened. Like you said, it was years ago so what difference does it make?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, with disgust. “A bunch of us had gone out there. We used to do these big scavenger hunts and play stupid games. That Friday night, it was Hide-and-Seek. Cornell and Charisse were in a room on the second floor. I stumbled in, looking for a place to hide, and there they were. I was horrified and so was he.”
She stopped. I thought that was the end of it, but she picked up again. “I guess I was naive, but I genuinely liked Charisse. I didn’t know she was using me to get to him.”
“What’d she say to you?”
“What could she say? I’d caught them in the act. Not that she was ever one to apologize for what she did. I told her she was a shit, but she shrugged it off. She didn’t care for my opinion or anyone else’s. Afterward, I begged her to stay away from him, but she was obsessed. I hated her for that. She nearly ruined his life.”
“How?”
Silence again. “Ask him. It’s really his business, not mine.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “She told him she was pregnant.”
Again, she was quiet.
“Am I right?”
“Yes. She was determined to marry him. She told me about it before she told him.”
“Why?”
“Because she thought I’d help. I told her to blow it out her butt, but she threatened to tell Mom and Dad unless I talked him into it.”
“Did anyone else know?”
“No. She was sure he’d marry her to avoid the embarrassment. Once he did that, it’d be too late for anyone else to interfere—meaning Justine, of course.”
“And he was willing to go along with this?”
“He didn’t have any choice. You know how straightlaced my parents are, especially Mom. If they found out, they’d have forced him to marry her anyway.”
“So what was the plan?”
“There wasn’t a
plan.
She had it all figured out. They were going to run off together. She knew a place where they could get a marriage license even if they were underage.”
“He must have been in a sweat.”
“He was really scared. I told him he was being dumb. How could he even be sure the kid was his? All he had to do was get five or six of his buddies to swear they’d screwed her too and he’d be off the hook.”
“Nice move, Adrianne. Did you come up with that yourself?”
“Well, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let her wreck my brother’s life! Besides, it was true. Why should he pay? He only did what every other guy was doing. Why’s that so wrong?”
“Oh sure. I can see your point. There’s only one tiny problem.”
“What.”
“She wasn’t pregnant.”
“Yes, she was.”
I shook my head. “I read the autopsy report.”
She stared at me, a hand lifting to her mouth as though pulled by strings. “Oh, shit. She made it up?”
“Apparently. So when she disappeared, what’d you think? That she’d gone off on her own to spare him the disgrace?”
“I didn’t know she was lying. I thought she might have decided to have an abortion.”
“If she’d been pregnant in the first place.”
There was another long silence and I stepped in again. “When you heard Medora’d filed a missing-persons report, weren’t you worried they’d find her?”
“I hoped they wouldn’t, but it did worry me.”
“But there might have been a way to head them off.”
“Head who off?”
“The cops who were looking for her.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“The phone call.”
She looked at me blankly, but I didn’t know her well enough to know if she was faking.
I said, “Someone called the Sheriff’s Department, claiming to be Charisse’s mother, saying she was home again, alive and well. The Lompoc Sheriff’s Department and the one down here were on the verge of linking the two—the missing girl and Jane Doe. Then the call came in and that was the end of that.”
“Well, it wasn’t me. I swear. I didn’t call anyone.”
“I’m not the one you have to persuade.” I got up and brushed off the back of my pants. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“I sincerely hope not.”
I went into the kitchen, feeling hyped up and tense. I was treading dangerous ground, but I couldn’t help myself. These people had been sitting on their secrets far too long. It was time to kick in a few doors and see who’d been hiding what. I wondered where Cornell was the night that Pudgie was killed. That was a subject worth pursuing.
In my absence, someone had drained off my entire cup of wine. I tossed the empty plastic in a trash can. As I went into the hall, I glanced into the bedroom Pudgie must have occupied. There was a single bed, covered with a plain spread, the blanket and pillow stacked together at the foot. The room had all the cozy charm of a jail cell. There were no curtains at the window, and the plain white shade had been pulled down halfway. No pictures, no personal possessions. The closet door stood open, revealing an empty hanging rod. Felicia must have swept through, boxing up everything he owned, and then called the Goodwill. I felt a pang of disappointment. Given my curious nature, I’d hoped for the opportunity to search his things. I wasn’t even sure what I thought I’d find— some sense of who he was, some feeling for why he’d died. I didn’t imagine he’d left a note about his final rendezvous, but there might have been a hint of what he’d meant to do in life.