The Girl on the Edge of Summer Page 12

  I had just finished my corned beef sandwich, down to the last fry and pickle, when a large group of young people came in. They were loud, but in a happy way. It was hard to tell which were the boys and which were the girls, not that it mattered, unless you were their gynecologist or wanted to date them and had a specific genital preference. Neither an option, in my case.

  One of them looked familiar.

  What was the nice polo shirt college boy doing here?

  I finished my beer. Maybe it was time to go.

  Or maybe it was time to hang about. I could be a good girl and stay away from both Mrs. Susie Stevens and Fast Eddie’s murder, but was it my fault when I was sitting around and her son and his friends happened to choose the same bar as me? Of all the genderqueer joints in the world, he happened to pick this one.

  I was hidden in the back, too old to be noticed by them. Plus I’d probably see nothing more interesting than what drink he ordered. It wasn’t like I’d overhear a confession to murder.

  The neat, collegiate look was gone. He was in tight black jeans and a white T-shirt designed to show off his developed muscles, with his hair gelled in the current hipster style. Most of his friends were dressed similarly, hip, queer, jeans and T-shirts. The same kind of stuff I’d worn back when I was in my twenties.

  I guessed he was here for the same reason I was, it was a cool place to hang out if you didn’t walk the straight and narrow.

  The louder parts of their conversation carried to my table, but it seemed mostly to be a discussion of where to go next and where they’d gone last.

  Mary brought my second beer.

  “New group in here?” I said with a nod at them.

  “Not really, they’re here about once a week.”

  “Know who they are?” She gave me a look. I’d never asked questions about the other patrons before. I added, “One of them looks like the son of a friend of mine.” That was close enough.

  “Mostly college kids, UNO, LSU. The ones old enough to drink. Yes, we do check ID when they look that young. A nice bunch, they come here usually after volunteering at the NO / AIDS office on Frenchmen.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t want to appear too curious. I doubted Mary would be happy with me playing detective in her bar.

  Time to finish my beer and go home.

  I’d just taken my third sip when he turned in my direction and clearly recognized me. He headed toward me.

  I feigned a blank expression, like I took so many cases out in the suburbs I couldn’t possibly remember them all.

  “Hi,” he said as he sat down, not even asking if he could.

  “Hi,” I answered. “Sorry, only interested in woman of the appropriate age.”

  “Don’t you recognize me?” he asked.

  “Should I?”

  “You’re the detective my mother hired.”

  Okay, I had choices here. I could continue to play dumb, like I had no clue of what he was talking about, or I could admit I knew, but cut it off. Or I could let him talk.

  “The police questioned her,” he added.

  Decision made. I was curious.

  “About what?”

  “I’m not sure. About a murder. They think she did it.”

  “Did she?”

  “No way! How can you ask that? You know her. You have to help her.”

  “Whoa, I’m a private detective. This is a police investigation. I can’t interfere with it.”

  “But…she’s really upset. She’s never been questioned by the police before.”

  “Have they interviewed you?”

  “Me? Why would they do that?”

  Time for an injection of reality. Maybe he was this naïve. “Who’s more likely to go after the scumball? The mother or the brother?”

  “Wait, what are you talking about?”

  “What do you know?” I countered. I had assumed his mother let him in on what was happening, at least a general outline, if not the gritty details. He could be playing dumb, as if he didn’t know, as a cover-up.

  Or maybe he really didn’t know.

  “She said you were a private detective working on something for her. I assumed it was about the divorce. Then yesterday, the police show up and demand to question her. I asked them what it was about and they said a murder investigation. They wouldn’t let me stay in the room while they talked to her, but she was really upset when they left, almost not making sense, saying they thought she killed him.

  “I had to give her a stiff shot of bourbon and drive her across the lake to stay with my aunt, her sister. Then I called my dad to make sure he was okay, and he was fine. Who do the police think she killed?”

  I so should have gotten out of here an hour ago. If he really didn’t know, I shouldn’t be the one to tell him. If he did, but was pretending otherwise, he could be using me as a cover.

  “Look,” I said into his expectant silence, “there’s very little I can tell you.”

  “But you know,” he said.

  “I know some things,” I admitted, “but I can’t really talk to you about them.”

  “My mother is falling apart. My dad is flying out to Las Vegas about now with his new girlfriend. I have to help her.”

  “Then talk to her and find out what’s going on.”

  “It’s about my sister, isn’t it?”

  “You need to talk to your mother,” I repeated.

  “You said who was more likely to go after the scumball, the mother or the brother? What did you mean by that?”

  “I’m sorry, I thought you already knew,” I said. Yes, indeed, I had planted my foot in it with that one. I continued, “What your mother hired me to do is confidential. If she gives me permission to talk to you, I can, but without that, I can’t.”

  He pulled out his phone.

  I prayed the cell towers were down. At two beers I was either not sober enough or not drunk enough to get into this.

  “Hey, Mom, it’s Alan.” He explained the situation to her.

  Then handed me the phone.

  Not even waiting for her to speak, I said, “Look, Mrs. Stevens, I’m very sorry for this mess, but there is little I can do to help at this point. It’s a police investigation and I can’t get involved.”

  “I fully understand that,” she said. Her speech was slightly slurred and she sounded mellow. Valium had probably been added to the bourbon. “I know I need to tell Alan what’s going on, but I just haven’t had a chance. Maybe it would be better this way.”

  “I really don’t feel…”

  “Please do this favor for me,” she added, her voice beseeching.

  I couldn’t curse her out as a manipulative bitch in front of her son. “Favor” meant I couldn’t even add it to the bill. Annoyingly, she had a point. He and I were sitting here talking about it. For her to tell him, he’d have to drive a hour or so across Lake Pontchartrain—I couldn’t see this conversation taking place over the phone—that was a long time to wait, and he probably wasn’t as sober as he should be for that drive. Plus, it wasn’t my daughter who was dead, and it would be easier for me to go through it all than for her, even with a lot of Valium and bourbon.

  “Okay, Mrs. Stevens,” I agreed. “I’ll do this for you, with your permission to discuss the entirety of the case you hired me for. There may be some things I’ll need to follow up with you about”—that would be what she told the cops that had them racing to my door—“so we may need to talk again.”

  She agreed, not exactly enthusiastically, but I had no way of knowing if that was the bourbon or the prospect of seeing me again. In any case, I was taking care of a major problem for her, letting her son in on why the police might be looking at his mother for murder. And giving him a heads-up that he might be considered a suspect as well.

  If I was going to step in it, I might as well get something out of it as well—maybe this would tell me if they were involved. If I thought they did do it, I’d leave them to the cops. I handed him his phone back. A nice
iPhone, I noted.

  “Did you sister ever mention someone named Edward to you? Someone she was dating?”

  He looked puzzled, thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah, but that was forever ago. She said she met a nice guy, that was his name, and maybe we’d go out together sometime. When I asked again, she said it hadn’t worked out.”

  “You never met him?”

  “No.”

  “She never said anything more about him?”

  “No.”

  “Or having troubles with someone?”

  “No. Where is this going?”

  I held up my hand to Mary for two more beers. We’d need them.

  “What do you know about what happened with your sister?”

  “I got a phone call. My dad. He never calls me, so I knew it was serious. Tiff was missing; they wanted to know if I had seen her. I hadn’t, but I drove home. It wasn’t like her to go missing. By the time I got home, they had found her car and the note. A few hours later they found her body. Everyone was upset, crying, me, too, I suppose…”

  I gently interjected, “Do you know what was in the note? Why she killed herself?” I didn’t need the blow-by-blow details, indeed, didn’t want to be shown the enormous pain of the family. There were therapists for that, and I’m not good at it. I wanted to find out what he knew, what the family dynamic was like. And which one of them knew who Eddie Springhorn was and what he had done.

  “I never saw the note. The police found it in the car. But I was told she was upset about a breakup with someone, thought she had done something that had messed up everything. I think something like, ‘I can’t fix this and I can’t face it.’”

  “What else do you know?”

  “About her death? She took the keys to Mom’s car without permission and drove off after school but before Mom was home from doing coffee with her garden friends in the neighborhood. They called me a couple of hours later. Dad had called in his connections and gotten the police to look for her. I kept thinking she’d show up at any minute, it would all be okay, even after they found the car and the note, that it was just some teenage acting out, a cry for attention. I made all sorts of plans to be a better older brother, to take her to football games, have her spend the weekend with me, but…”

  He started to cry.

  I handed him the napkin from under my beer. Not classy, but it was all I had. I keep tissues in my office.

  I gave him a moment, then said, “I’m sorry, this won’t be easy. Your sister met Eddie Springhorn, a man several years older. Bluntly, Eddie was pond scum, good at wooing young high school girls and manipulating them for sex. He conned your sister into sending him pictures of her without her clothes on and then used them to coerce her into having sex with him. She refused, and he threatened to send the pictures to people at her high school.”

  “That was all?” he said.

  “He was persistent and not at all nice about it; that seems to have been his MO. She may have felt too ashamed to tell anyone and too afraid of him.”

  “That’s why she killed herself?”

  “It seems to be what may have pushed her over the edge,” I carefully said. “There is no way to know for sure. Adolescence is a time of hormonal changes, new surges of emotions that can amplify despair.” But I needed to get away from the messy stuff. “Your mother knew about what had happened, but she didn’t know who the boy was. She hired me to find out. That’s what led to Edward Springhorn.”

  “He was the guy that did this to my sister? How much time would I get if I beat the crap out of him?” He slammed his beer mug on the table, hard enough that his friends looked at us with worried expressions.

  “Someone already got there. Edward was murdered.”

  “And they think my mother might have killed him?” His expression was outraged.

  “They have to investigate everyone.”

  “But she didn’t even know him. He was just a name.”

  I sighed. “She was angry and made the hasty decision to call his workplace. They presumably reacted the way most workplaces would do, told him some crazy lady was calling and making accusations about him. He came to your house and tried to speak to your mother. She called me; I came over and, after some arguing, convinced him to leave. So his workplace could have told the police about her, he might have had something about her. The police came and talked to me as well.”

  “This isn’t real, is it? My sister, and now my mother being accused of murder. You have to help me prove she didn’t do it.” He was either a very good actor (I’d have to check and see if he was majoring in drama) or he was genuinely stunned. And, I might add, not thinking very clearly.

  “I’m only a private detective; I can’t interfere with a murder investigation. Leave it to the police. Eddie Springhorn is the kind of man who makes enemies. Unless your mother did it, she’ll be fine.”

  “That’s the problem. She might have.”

  Not enough vodka and valium in the world for this.

  I took a gulp of my beer. And another. Still not enough.

  “Look, you’d be better talking to a lawyer. If you say anything incriminating—”

  “No, listen, I don’t know anything, I just know this all doesn’t make sense.”

  “Then why say your mother might have done it?”

  “She’s been not herself lately.”

  I stared at him. Another drink of beer. “That’s it? Not herself?”

  “No…well, yes. But…” Now he took a sip of his beer.

  “Is there a gun in the house?”

  “Of course. Dad has a collection of hunting rifles. Tried to teach me to hunt. I hated it. Soft furry creatures covered in blood. I threw up the first time—”

  “A handgun.”

  “Like a pistol?”

  Either this kid had a career ahead of him in the movies, or he wasn’t the murderer. He had no clue about guns, and anyone who had just shot Fast Eddie had to at least know how to pull a trigger.

  “Yes, like a pistol.”

  “Yeah, I think so. They kept it in their bedroom, for protection, you know.”

  “Did your mother know how to shoot it?”

  “I guess so. You just pull the trigger, right?”

  Um, not quite. That remained unsaid. “Did you ever go to a shooting range? Had she been trained on how to use it?”

  “Maybe? Not that I remember. I think it was mostly for my dad. He may have taken it with him when he left. Now, he knows how to use a gun.”

  Ah, yes, the hunting dad. “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’d have to check. But he said something about the guns being his. He took all his hunting rifles, moved the whole case out. I guess I just assumed he took that one, too.”

  “Can you check?”

  “Sure. When I get back to the house tonight.”

  I took another sip of beer. The last one. That wasn’t going to help this night get any better. Having him check on the gun was getting into cop territory, but they had gotten my name with questioning Susie Stevens. They had a chance to check for the gun then.

  “If you find it, don’t handle it,” I said.

  “Why?”

  So touchingly naïve. “Fingerprints. If yours aren’t already on the gun, don’t put them there.”

  “Maybe I should wipe it down.”

  “No. Don’t tamper with the evidence.”

  “But—”

  “No. Just no. You’re not smarter and better equipped than the cops. It’s a gun your parents kept in the bedroom, it doesn’t prove anything if their fingerprints are on it. Wipe it clean and it’ll make it look like someone is trying to hide evidence.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He took another sip of his beer. I envied him the still half-full glass. Then he said, “But you will help me, won’t you?”

  I should have said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and walked out. Instead, I said, “I will not help you tamper with evidence or cover up a crime. Put your college-educated hat on. Eve
n if your mother—or father—killed Eddie, no jury in this state would give them more than a slap on the wrist. Eddie was scum, and most juries here will put him in the category of he-needed-killing.”

  “But I have to do something!” He started crying. Into his beer. What a waste.

  “Doing something is fine. Doing something stupid is…well, stupid.” I pushed my crumpled-up napkin (one finger only—it was soggy from previous use) back to him.

  “So what should I do? I can’t let my parents go to jail.”

  As quietly as I could, I sighed. “It’s too late for that. If they had anything to do with killing him, then the consequences are already coming at them. You can’t stop that, and you end up being accessory after the fact and go to jail as well.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Why do you think your mother may have done it?”

  “She’s been so weird lately.”

  “She’s grieving. A mother who lost her only daughter. What else?”

  “In the last few days, she’s been angry.”

  “She just found out who the bastard was; that might well cause an eruption of anger.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But…I overheard her say, ‘I’ll kill him for this.’ I thought she was talking about my dad going off to Vegas with his new girlfriend. Like he didn’t want to have to deal with things here anymore.”

  “Who did she say this to?”

  “No one. She’d been on the phone, put it down and then said that.”

  “Who was she talking to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could it have been your father? Him telling her about the Vegas trip?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who else might it have been?”

  “I don’t know. You, maybe.”

  I had told Mrs. Stevens about Eddie in person. I tried to remember if there was a phone call between us in the time frame. However, people say “I’ll kill” all the time without really meaning they’ll kill someone. “What else?”

  “What else?” he repeated.

  “What else makes you think your mother might have killed him?”