The Girl on the Edge of Summer Page 19

  When I finally felt I could break in, I said, “Wow, you really know a lot about computers.” The truth was I didn’t know enough to judge. But if I had to put money on a bet between him and the computer grannies, my money would be on the grannies. Oh, he wasn’t stupid, but he came off more as the kind of boy who stayed home and played computer games and learned what he needed to know to do what he wanted to do. But he also was one of the boys who desperately needed something he was good at, that he could be the best at. If flattery got my questions answered, I had no compunctions about using it.

  He smiled.

  I continued, “So, Eddie needed you to help out with setting up all the games and computer stuff for the parties?”

  “Yeah. He and his friends had no clue. They’d have been sitting watching TV if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Did all the parties take place there?”

  “In the fall, yeah, but around Thanksgiving they moved,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Out by the airport. A garage out there. One of his friends worked there, so we could use it after it closed.”

  “Did he need you to set up the internet out there as well?”

  “That had internet, but he needed me to set up the games and stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  He shrugged, feigning modesty. “Like a couple of TVs, so people could watch in different rooms.”

  “How often did the parties take place?”

  “Usually the weekends.”

  “And you went to most of them?”

  He ate another bite of the now-cold pizza before answering, “Yeah, some, but only the ones when they needed me to set stuff up. So no, not all of them.”

  A lie. But which one? That he went to most of them and saw things that he didn’t want to admit to? Or that he was only used for computer set up and dumped as quickly as possible afterward?

  I was getting tired of the smell of stale pizza grease. I put the twenty I’d stuffed in my pocket back on the table.

  “Tell me where the place by the airport is.”

  He looked at the money and his phone.

  Then gave me the address.

  As I headed back to my car, I considered what I’d gotten for my money. That Eddie was involved with a teacher at Tiffany’s school who found out in a humiliating way that he was two-timing her with her students—nothing like a woman scorned. That Brandon and possibly his friend Kevin were at the parties. I doubted they were innocently watching movies the entire time. Had they seen the pictures? Was that why he was so evasive?

  And I had the name and address of an auto body shop out beyond the airport.

  I got in my car. Time to get out of the suburbs.

  Now my dilemma was to follow up on these on my own or hand them over to the police. In normal circumstances, I’d be speed-dialing Joanne right now. But as a suspect, anything I passed on would be viewed with suspicion.

  And even without the suspicion, I only had a few hints of clues from a kid who probably couldn’t shave yet. Only I’d seen his evasiveness, the places where he’d lied or omitted information, and much of what I’d gotten was less from what he said than how he said it.

  I sighed. Big sigh. The cops weren’t likely to believe me and, even if they did, were not likely to think it important.

  And they were very possibly right.

  Just before crossing the line back into Orleans Parish, I turned away.

  Maybe Mrs. Stevens was home and we could have a friendly chat.

  The fates were either smiling on me or toying with me. She was unloading groceries from her SUV.

  “Let me give you a hand,” I said as I came up behind her.

  She gasped, startled, dropped the bag, and apples rolled down the driveway.

  I bent to pick them up.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “Since I was so good about helping you with your problems, I thought you might be willing to help me with mine. Like the cops think I might have killed Eddie, and one of their big pieces of evidence is that my gun was fired, but they can’t find the bullet in your lawn.”

  “I didn’t take it,” she said, her words clipped.

  I dumped the apples back into her bag. She didn’t even thank me.

  “No, but you were here and you witnessed it. I get you don’t want anything else to do with the police, but you know I did fire a warning shot here in front of your house. I need you to tell the truth to the police.”

  “I don’t want to talk to them.”

  “I understand. I don’t want to talk to them either. But if they can’t find the bullet, you’re the only proof I have that my gun was only fired here as a warning.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  I stared at her.

  “Yes, I heard the shot, but you were fighting with him. Maybe you kept fighting. Maybe you killed him.”

  Bitch.

  “No, I wasn’t fighting with him. You,” I repeated for emphasis, “you were fighting with him. I intervened on your behalf. I have no fight with him and no reason to kill him.”

  “Are you saying I did?”

  I kept my voice as calm and reasonable as I could. She was still a grieving mother. “Certainly more than I do. He’s a scumbag. He hurt you and your family, took despicable advantage of your daughter. I wouldn’t blame you for shooting him. If I were you—”

  “Get out of here! Get off my lawn. How dare you say these things?”

  “Because I came out here to help you and now you’re lying to the police—yes, omission is a lie—to make it look like I killed him.”

  “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know you didn’t kill him. I want you gone!”

  She was veering into hysteria.

  I wanted to scream back at her. But doing so would only make me look like what I was being accused of—someone out of control, willing to harass a mother who had just lost her daughter to get what I wanted, enough anger issues to have gone after Fast Eddie because he pissed me off.

  Literally biting my tongue, I spun away from her and strode to my car and drove five blocks away before stopping to put on my seat belt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Two aspirin and at least a gallon of coffee. That was the minimum it would take to make me feel human—well, functional.

  I’d said fuck everything and just taken the entire weekend off from work, thinking about work, thinking about anything else, with long workouts at the gym (and now sore muscles), catching up on my to-be-read pile, a frenzy in the kitchen with the freezer now stuffed with pizza dough and bread, plus a few containers of healthy chicken soup. Maybe if I could just defrost it I would eat a more healthy diet. Maybe. And hanging out at any reasonable bar (no tourist ones, no karaoke) where I was likely to see no one I didn’t want to see. Stayed out too late last night.

  Now it was a brutal Monday morning and I was paying the price for too much activity, too much alcohol, and too little of any of the trendy self-care.

  It had taken me three cups to get out of my house.

  Although I’d made it to my office, that was likely to be the sum accomplishment of my day. I was staring at a blank computer screen because I hadn’t bothered to turn it on yet.

  After the debacle with Mrs. Stevens, I’d come home, parked my car, and made the rounds of my favorite and, to be honest, not-so-favorite bars in the vicinity. A location, I should add, with a high concentration of watering holes.

  I took three aspirin.

  I had drunk away my sorrow and anger, and this hangover was testament to how much of each I had.

  Mrs. Susie Stevens had decided she was going to lie to the police by claiming a faulty memory about whether I’d fired my gun or not. It was a devious strategy. She wasn’t really lying, as no one could call her on her loss of memory. It made it seem like she knew I hadn’t fired the gun but wasn’t going to say that because I’d helped her find out about her daughter. She got to appear loyal while putting me front
and center in the list of possible murder suspects.

  The things I’d learned from Brandon yesterday. As I’d suspected, he hadn’t given any of the proverbial smoking guns. A few names, a few people to talk to who might give me a few more names. A few more details about Fast Eddie, and maybe in that haystack I’d find the needle that would lead to his real killer.

  Or at least prove that it wasn’t me.

  The glimpse of someone who looked like Cordelia. Driving the kind of car she’d drive. Could she really be in town?

  Of course, planes fly in every day. Major highways lead here.

  The phone rang.

  Maybe I needed another aspirin.

  Answer it I did not.

  The machine brayed, “Hi, I’d like an update on my case. Haven’t heard from you. Give me a call today and let me know. Want to know what my money’s being spent on. I’ll be in town next week. I’ll plan to come by.”

  Then he hung up.

  Maybe the whole bottle of aspirin.

  He’d left no name or info about the case, but I recognized the arrogant tones of Douglas Townson.

  What update did I have for him? Your granddad was probably a sexual sadist and killer, certainly liked to visit the rougher parts of Storyville. He was most likely somewhere he shouldn’t have been doing something he shouldn’t have been doing and was too much of a sociopath to think he’d taste the dish he was serving. Did one of the women—and her friends—take him on when he tried to kill her? Or was it a common robbery turned violent? A rival planter who took the opportunity to dump him to make it look like a robbery?

  At this distance, there was no way for me to solve it. I doubted Douglas Townson would be willing to pay top dollar to find out what I had uncovered.

  Nor was it likely I’d find who had killed Fast Eddie. The best I could hope for was to turn up enough to muddy the waters so thoroughly I became one of many who might have done it, and eventually the police would shrug their shoulders and move on to the next crime.

  That left me with no clear direction for my day, other than getting rid of my throbbing headache.

  More coffee.

  Track down who the chemistry teacher was. The easy way would be to call the friendly teacher, Ms. Lee, but for all I knew the cops had tapped my phone. I could probably count on them at least pulling my phone records to see who I was calling. And if I could avoid it, I didn’t want to put her in the position of deciding whether or not to rat out a colleague. They might be best friends, and a call on my part would tip her off that her secret affair wasn’t so secret.

  It only took me about an hour, and that mostly because of the continued intake of coffee, which required an outflow of the used-up coffee, and every trip to the bathroom included staring out the window for several minutes, doing a few rounds of a word game after sitting back at my desk before continuing the search.

  It confirmed my assessment that Brandon knew a lot about what he wanted to know and found useful but didn’t have a truly comprehensive grasp of information technology. He seemed to have little knowledge of how much data was accessible and how easily the few details he had given led me to her identity. My guess was that he thought, or rather, didn’t really think about it and assumed that only school people would have access to the teachers.

  For one, he had said “her.” That alone considerably narrowed it down.

  Enid Emily Gardner. Graduated from LSU eight years ago. Education major, chemistry minor. Liked knitting scarves. Yeah, she hadn’t locked down her Facebook account.

  I try not to judge people on looks, but nature hadn’t been kind to her. A weak chin, lumpy nose, flat, stringy hair. Small eyes a little too close together behind thick glasses.

  She was about five years older than Eddie. Assumptions are dangerous things, but from her looks and list of activities on social media, it didn’t sound like she had an active dating life. Maybe the kind of wallflower who would be so desperate for attention, she could get taken in—at least for a while—by someone like Fast Eddie.

  She’d be at school now, and that would not be a good time to try to talk to her.

  Fortunately, the all-knowing, all-seeing internet had coughed up her home address. I do pay the bucks to access the main databases that have information not as readily accessible to most people. To be fair to her, that is where I found her address.

  I wanted to do none of this. To bury my head in the proverbial sand, ignore life by reading articles that had nothing to do with anything relevant until it was reasonable enough in the day to move on to cocktails.

  Joanne thought I’d possibly killed Fast Eddie. That stung. Of course, the prospect I’d be arrested, maybe go to trial, and the mess and cost of hiring a lawyer to defend me was also a worry. But the rift that had seeped into our friendship—and how it might affect my other friends. Could they really be close to something they suspected might be a murderer?

  All compelling reasons for me to do my utmost to clear my name.

  Get the fuck out of your office and at least do something.

  Car. Drive.

  To the address for the auto place Brandon had given me.

  It was in the no-man’s-land beyond the airport. I know the main arteries—I-10, Airline Highway, Veterans, but only until they reach the airport. Once you pass that, it’s uncharted territory for me. I had to take Veterans, an annoying stretch of chain joints, stoplights, and the worst of suburban driving. A few blocks after passing the airport turn I found the first of several side streets I needed to take to get there. It was in a cul-de-sac that ended at a field surrounding the airport. I drove by twice, mainly because I didn’t realize the road dead-ended and I couldn’t do the block.

  I had hoped to be able to park somewhere nondescript and observe, but the best I could do was go back before the corner and pull over. There was little traffic here; the only people who traveled these roads had a destination in mind. It made me conspicuous. I pulled out a map to make it look like I was a lost soul who was trying to figure out where I’d taken a wrong turn.

  I could only see an oblique view of the body shop, no way to watch who was there or who was coming and going.

  “Can I help you?” caught me unawares.

  I stared at the frumpy woman at my car window.

  I rolled it down.

  “I seem to be lost,” I said.

  “Figured. No one comes this way ’less they work here or missed the airport turn. Where you tryin’ to go?”

  A quick look at the map and I picked a random street several blocks away.

  “Why you going there?” she asked.

  I had found the neighborhood busybody. Good if I wanted info, not good if I wanted to be discreet.

  “Work for a property firm. Looking at some possible investment properties out here,” I lied.

  She laughed. Coffee and tobacco stained teeth on full display.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “Out here, in this dirty dog hind leg of a place? Only investment here is where to dump bodies or brew meth.”

  “Looks like some thriving business out here. Close to the airport.”

  “Yeah, right. Close means the planes roaring overhead day and night. What’s your real reason for coming out here? Looking for drugs?”

  “No, no, I’m really out here to scope out land. You’ve read about the new airport expansion, right?”

  She narrowed her eyes. The airport was, indeed supposed to expand.

  “So now is the time to buy. You know of anything for sale around here?” I wasn’t so much pumping her for information as trying to ask her the questions so she’d stop asking me questions, forcing me into even more elaborate lies.

  “I got a bridge I can sell you,” she said with more display of the browning teeth. But she added, “Right price, anyone around here would sell.”

  “You own any of these businesses?”

  “Naw.” She shook her head. “I manage that apartment over there.” She pointed to a building that h
ad looked cheap when it was new, two stories, probably one or two small bedrooms, everything bottom of the line. No one was going to pay high rent to live in the shadow of planes.

  To make the point one was overhead, the throb of the engines drowning out her words.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “Said it ain’t such a bad place to live. Too unruly, I get to throw ’em out. No drugs, not in the place I run. Not even the sniff of pot.”

  “But you thought I was here for drugs?”

  “Not at my place,” she said. “But I can’t control what else goes on ’round here.”

  “Like what?” I didn’t really care. I wanted to talk long enough to not appear to be blowing her off. Maybe I could work it around to the body shop, but it was a long block away from her apartment fiefdom.

  “Down there.” She pointed in a vague direction.

  I used her vagueness. “Like that car place?”

  “Oh, yeah, them, they’re the worst. All them places on that block.”

  “Really? How?” I asked, keeping my voice the same tone, not wanting to show more interest than in any of the rest of them.

  “Big black trucks in and out all hours of the night. Once the planes stop, you can hear anything. They think no one is watching, but I am. Parties too often. Who would party in a body shop?”

  “How do you know it’s drugs?” I asked, just enough skepticism in my voice to goad her into elaborating.

  “What else could it be?”

  So much for elaboration.

  “Sex. Close to an airport. Easy to get that kind of stuff in. Maybe that’s what the parties are for.”

  “Out here? No one’s coming for sex out here. Nothing sexy about this place. Has to be drugs.”

  “Maybe they need the money to do deals for after-hours body work.”

  “Naw. The noise changes. In the day, you hear their machines and stuff. At night, none of that. Just big trucks, a few cars. In for a few minutes, then they leave. Almost every night.”

  “What about the parties? How often are they? You smell any weed from them?”

  “Not so often, maybe every week or so. Weird nights like a Tuesday sometimes. Goes to all hours. Loud music, until we called the cops on them. Then they quieted down right good.”