The Girl on the Edge of Summer Read online

  “But it wasn’t. I did not kill him. I was nowhere near when he died. After our encounter here on the lawn, I wanted nothing more to do with him and hoped to never see him again.”

  “You’re not helping yourself if you wait until we have all the evidence,” she said.

  I stared at her. I had to literally count to ten to stop myself from yelling “what the fuck are you talking about?” Even then, the best I could manage was, “There is no fucking evidence to find because I fucking did not kill him. Ballistics will clear me. Do your goddamn tests.”

  “That’s the problem; the bullet we found in him is too damaged to test. Your gun was recently fired. We can’t find the bullet here. In fact, it looks more like someone was digging around in the lawn than a bullet trajectory.”

  “And that’s enough to accuse me of murder?” I packed a steamer trunk of sarcasm in my tone.

  “No. But someone saw your car near where he was killed.”

  “What!?” I stopped, swallowed coffee even though it was cold and the last thing my bladder needed. Anything to break this chain. “That’s not possible. And besides, I drive the most nondescript car on the planet.”

  “A gray Mazda with a St. Charles Athletic Club parking sticker on it?”

  I stared to her. Finally said, “Not mine. Or someone stole my car.”

  A SUV came down the street, then jerked to a stop beside us. Mrs. Susie Stevens jumped out, leaving her vehicle running, the door open.

  “What is going on here? What are you doing on my property?”

  “We’re looking for evidence,” the JPSO deputy said, he was closest to her.

  “Evidence? For what? Haven’t you people done enough to us?”

  “They need to find the bullet I fired into your lawn,” I said.

  She stared at me as if she’d never seen me. “What bullet?” she said, looking from me to the deputies, to Joanne, her eyes never landing on anyone.

  “You called me to come help you deal with him. When he showed up here. He almost punched me and I fired a shot to warn him off. It went into your lawn.”

  “You shot my lawn?”

  “I was trying to protect you,” I told her. Protect me, really, but she was next in line.

  “I don’t remember a shot,” she said, the eyes still roaming.

  How much Xanax was she on? “Do you remember when he came here? After you called his work? He threatened you and you called me.”

  “Shoulda called us,” the JPSO deputy put in.

  I agreed with him, but continued. “He was here. I came and told him to leave. You must have heard the argument.”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “Please, you all need to leave. You can’t just barge in here. I’ve answered all the questions I’m going to answer.”

  “You need to tell the truth about what happened,” I told her.

  She didn’t look at me, turned her back to us all, and strode to her door, leaving her SUV haphazardly parked halfway into the street.

  I started to follow, but Joanne grabbed my arm. I could only repeat, “You need to tell the truth.”

  She kept her back turned. We stared at her as she fumbled with her keys until she finally opened her door, slamming it behind her. No lights came on in the house.

  “Damn her,” I muttered under my breath. Make me a more likely suspect and it would make her less of one.

  “Do you want to talk?” Joanne asked softly.

  “No. There is nothing to talk about. Unless you want to discuss why she’s lying. To save herself? So zoned out on anxiety meds she can’t remember? Take your pick.”

  “We need to close down here,” the deputy said. Then with a look at Joanne, “Unless you want to get a search warrant. If there was a bullet in that hole, we’d found it by now.”

  “No, let’s leave,” she said, letting go of my arm.

  I started to protest, to say there had to be a bullet, to proclaim my innocence. But no words would change anything. I marched back to my car, intent on getting out of here.

  Before they arrested me.

  More practically, I had to make a coffee relief stop, which required me to hit the suburban strip with its legions of McBurger Things. Between Joanne and the stupidity of drivers who didn’t seem to understand that the white lines in the road meant something, I found myself gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands lest a finger put itself in the locked and upright position.

  I like to think I’m ethical enough to actually buy something when I stop to pee, but the truth is it gives me an upstanding excuse to order unhealthy crap like a chocolate shake, probably made out of nothing resembling milk. The day hadn’t even hit noon yet, and disgustingly unhealthy was as close to a consolation prize as I could find.

  As I sat in my car and slurped, I considered what to do next.

  Not be somewhere easily found came to mind. I turned off my cell phone. The cops can do GPS tracking—or maybe I was getting paranoid—in any case, a turned-off phone meant all calls would go to voice mail. Just in case Joanne called to ask me to come down to the station. I needed to lean on Mrs. Susie Stevens, but that would have to wait. Both she and the cops were probably expecting me to be circling back there even now, and I wanted to avoid letting them be right. I’d give her a day or so to think she’d gotten away with her lack of recall. The question was why she had suddenly developed a convenient memory problem. Did she kill Fast Eddie and wanted to pin the blame on me? To protect her son? Her ex? If so, was it because she knew they killed him or because she thought they did? Or was she was truly so bewildered and medicated, she was having trouble remembering? Did she think I had done it? If she or her son or ex did it, then she had to know I hadn’t. So why not dump the blame on one of his low-life friends instead of me? What had I done to her to deserve this? Maybe she was desperate, lost in this new world of criminal suspicion—that doesn’t happen in the safe suburbs—and didn’t know what to do other than protect herself.

  Fuck. This was taking me around in circles.

  Joanne had said my car had been seen near where he was killed. Since I didn’t know where that was, I couldn’t say for sure it wasn’t a stupid coincidence. But I doubted that I traveled anywhere near the same locations he did.

  I glanced at the faded sticker for the gym parking lot. A nasty feeling crept up my spine. Someone would have had to be standing very close to my windshield to have made out the name. A few years of New Orleans sun made it hard to read in daylight. What were the chances a helpful citizen just happened to notice it in the dark? Far easier for someone to scout out my car and take note of anything that might identify it. I deliberately avoided bumper stickers, Saints flags, etc., keeping my car as plain as could be. I only put the sticker on the windshield because I needed it for the parking lot. Torbin hung a Muses shoe from his rearview mirror, claiming, “This is New Orleans, we don’t do dice.” Now, that would be noticed. My faded sticker? Not so much.

  And the missing bullet? Had it been removed already? The cops did say it looked more like someone was digging there.

  I burped. I was going to regret this fake milkshake later. Like many things in my life.

  I headed back into traffic, wanting to get away from suburban insanity before the frenzy of lunch hit.

  I decided the library was the safest place to be. Joanne wouldn’t think to look for me there, and it gave me a plausible excuse for turning the phone off.

  I could hang there until I went to meet…I hoped I remembered his name before I got there.

  Either I’d blacked out and murdered Fast Eddie, or someone was trying to frame me. Driving back from suburban hell to CBD chaos and thinking that thought upped my screaming at drivers all the vile things I hoped happened to their testicles for their utter inability to use a turn signal unless they forgot they had one blinking and kept going straight.

  “Fuck this,” I muttered, as I finally parked close enough to the library to gaze at it in the distance. I needed to calm down, stop feel
ing sorry for myself, and think this through.

  Entering the long-ago world of Samuel and his beloved Alibe Braud might help.

  At least it would keep me off the streets.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The library seemed a kinder, gentler place than the cold, cruel (okay, reasonably temperate) world outside. A hushed calm, Cindy, my favorite archivist, happy to lend a hand. And an excuse to not be at home or my office or even have my cell phone on.

  As for being arrested, I’d think about that tomorrow. Another day and all that.

  There was a single candle burning when I arrived home, so late as to be closer to morning than night.

  “You needn’t have waited up,” I told Alibe, quickly kissing her on the cheek, the haste to avoid that she might catch the lingering stench of death. “We have electricity, you needn’t consign yourself to a flickering candle.”

  “There is no reason to waste it; all I need is to keep the dark out, and the candle is enough.”

  I had gone to the washbasin to wash my face and hands, as if mere water could erase the taint of what I had seen. Looking up at her, the water still dripping on my face, I saw the lines of care etched on her face.

  “You needn’t worry on me. I’m with other officers of the law, well protected.” Better protected than even you, but I did not say that. The woman I had seen tonight was younger than my dear Alibe.

  “I know. I suppose it’s silly of me. But I can’t sleep, I might as well be up so when you come home, I can rest with you.”

  “What worries you?” I asked, wiping the water from my face and hands. “I am with armed men, as well as armed myself. My badge protects me.”

  “I know. But you’re on the streets few respectable people tread. One bullet, one knife. And to be selfish, I worry about what would happen to me without you. I have little to sustain me beyond my marriage to you.”

  I am a man and have made my way in the world as such, with opportunities both of education and work enough to keep myself. The world of a woman is not something I had much considered. Of course, I pitied the women of the District, wondered what had led them to such a life, the choices they had made. But little considered the choices they had. Could the death of a husband so callously bring to fruition the worries I beheld on my wife’s face?

  “I will not let that happen,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “For my own sake, I am careful on my behalf. I will be doubly more for your sake.”

  She relaxed in my embrace. But I still felt the tension in her back. We both knew my words alone were no protection, a guttering candle against the darkness.

  I woke before her in the morn, my thoughts still on the night, the young girl dead too soon, and what Alibe had said, her care of what would happen to her if I were to be killed or disabled.

  I made the coffee and toast, something she usually did. Even with armed men about me, there were so many ways to fall into mortality; a spooked horse, a careless driver of the new automobiles, yellow jack, or the other miasmas that could fell a grown man in his prime. I had considered little of what would happen to Alibe—and children if we were blessed with them—should I not be here. Her father and mother might take her in, but he is not in good health and has little beyond the meager farm from which to provide. He was never fond of me, with my big-city ways, but happy enough that I would be the one responsible for his daughter’s keeping. Her older brother, meant to take the farm, had lost his arm from falling off a horse, and does little to support his wife and children, save a litany of saloon jobs where he drinks more than he serves. Perhaps as a widow, the school would keep her on—they only allowed her to continue after she married because they were so short of teachers. But the paltry sum they pay her could do little more than provide the most shabby of living circumstances.

  I brought the coffee and toast to her in bed. Her worrying in the night had possibly been more taxing than what I had done. I, at least, have action and purpose, and deal only with tragedies that are not part of my life.

  She woke, surprised at the coffee before her. Then alarmed that she had neglected her duty.

  I kissed her gently on the forehead. “You are the greatest part of my heart. I do not want you to worry or fret on my behalf, on things that may never be. Together we will devise a plan. I would not be a man if I did not care for the woman I love the most, even beyond the grave.”

  She smiled. “You are right, I must not worry about events that aren’t real. I will try to do better as your wife.”

  I wished to reassure her that she was everything I wanted in a wife—brave, strong, smart, resilient, funny—and foolish enough to love me—but the day called. She had to ready for school, and I had to finish my coffee and toast as well. There would be time to talk later.

  I started skimming at that point. As interesting as Samuel Braud was, the tales of a robber caught, a slow ride on the streetcar, the searing heat of the summer held little interest. I wanted to see if any more women were killed, but after the death of Frederic Townson, the ones I found were the ones to be expected, sadly. A fight with a husband, a boyfriend, the all-too-common ways women are still killed.

  Tellingly, once he was dead, no more women were murdered with their undergarments jammed in their throats. Still not proof, but there would be no trial, no beyond all reasonable doubt. Everything I had found said that Frederick Townson was a murderer, one who may have been killed by a random thief, or perhaps one of his victims had fought back. I liked the latter theory but had even less evidence for that than for his being a vicious serial killer.

  I glanced at my watch.

  No wonder I was hungry. The hour resembling lunch had long passed.

  Maybe I’d have to settle for a slice when I met with…Brandon.

  It seemed wrong, going out to the Metairie suburbs twice in one day.

  Save for that being the last place Joanne would look for me.

  I turned on my phone just long enough to make sure there were no messages calling this meeting off. Then I turned it off again, as in forgetting to turn it on after the library.

  The drive out there was a combination of the after-school idiocy and the early rush-hour stupidity. Streets have one-way signs for a reason, people.

  Brandon had arrived before me. He was ensconced in a booth with a large everything pizza in front of him, two slices already missing and a pitcher of soda close at hand.

  “Who else is joining us?” I asked as I sat down.

  He gave me a look like I was some sort of idiot.

  “It’s just us. I told you that.”

  “You going to eat all of that?”

  “I planned to take part of it home. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I started to ask why would I mind, until I noticed him nudging the bill in my direction.

  Don’t argue with a teenage kid over twenty bucks, I decided, hiding my annoyance by picking up the grease-stained check and taking it to the register.

  I also got a plate for myself. If I was paying for it, I would be eating some of it. I didn’t want my stomach rumbling while we talked.

  He gave me a side-eye as I took two slices, but didn’t say anything.

  After a few minutes of eating, I finally said, “So, you said you had information for me.”

  “Yeah,” he said, at least polite enough to finish chewing before he replied. “Real important. Cheap at just the price of a pizza.”

  “I’d like to be the judge of that,” I said.

  “So what else will you give me?”

  I gave him my best WTF look.

  It took him a few moments, but he finally got the message. “I mean, this is stuff you need to know.”

  “Maybe the police should know it as well,” I said, putting my phone on the table. The last thing I needed was some pimply-faced kid acting like he could outbluff me.

  He swallowed, not pizza, but a gulp of nervousness. Amateur. Worse, young, immature amateur. Here in this greasy pizza place, I was safe enough to be annoyed
. Give him a gun and he’d be my worst nightmare. Like Fast Eddie. I had been honest when I told Joanne I wanted nothing more to do with him. Men just young enough to still think they’ll live forever and adolescent enough to think of consequences as nothing beyond today or tomorrow are the ones who scare me the most.

  But over greasy pizza, Braydon, Braddock, oh, yeah, Brandon was just annoying.

  “So what do you have? If it’s truly good, maybe I will throw in something extra.” I’d won the round, no need to rub it in his face.

  In a low voice, his idea of conspirators, he said, “Eddie Springhorn has been murdered.”

  I waited for him to continue. Long enough for me to realize that was it.

  “Yeah, I know,” in a voice that indicated “no more pizza for you.”

  He stared to me. “No one else knew. I had to tell the kids at school.”

  “Really? What did you tell them?”

  “Just that he was dead. Got shot.”

  “How’d you know he was shot?”

  “That’s just what I heard.”

  “From who?”

  “A friend of his.”

  “The friend who shot him?”

  “No, no! Not that kind of friend. A friend who would hear something like that. Someone close to his friends who would know what had happened.”

  Well, that was an interesting reaction. It meant he either knew more than he was saying—not likely—or that he knew a lot less but wanted to act like he knew more. I could push, but it would only expose how little he knew, and there was no point in that except for my ego winning over a kid who should be doing his homework.

  I tried a different tack. “Did any of your school friends know him?”

  “Yeah, maybe. He hung around. Think Kevin did. How did you find out?” His question was almost accusing, as if I’d deliberately cheated him out of a second large everything pizza.

  “I read the papers. Have friends on the police force.” I didn’t elaborate that some of those friends were threatening to arrest me, so I was more involved in the murder than I wanted to be.