The Girl on the Edge of Summer Read online

  “What kind of people go to them?”

  She looked at me as if wondering why I was asking such questions.

  “I mean, why would anyone come out here?”

  “My point exactly. Don’t know who goes. Same type black trucks, ’cept they all come ’round the same time instead of in and out through the night.”

  “Any kite flyers hanging around?”

  “There? Naw. Some of these other blocks, you might find ’em. Not in my place. We throw ’em out at the first sign.”

  “If no one is high, how do you know it’s drugs?”

  “Late one night, saw a cop car drive in. Left a few minutes later and parked right under my window. Watched him open an envelope and count money. Gotta be drugs.”

  “Well, you might be right. But I bet things will change with the new airport expansion.”

  “You gonna be buying stuff ’round here?”

  I hedged. “Possible. Not my call. I just do the footwork.”

  “You let me know if you’re gonna buy my place.” She handed me a worn, cheap business card. “Kinda gettin’ old to find a new place.”

  I took the card. My lies gave me no choice. “I will let you know if I know anything.”

  At least that wasn’t a lie. I would tell her. But I wouldn’t know anything.

  I drove away. In the rearview mirror, I could see her watching me. I kept driving, leaving the neighborhood. I’d found few answers and plenty of other questions. If she was right, and they were dealing drugs out of Fast Eddie’s party place, that might add a whole long list of suspects.

  I cruised around the neighborhood a bit, staying safely away from where the neighborhood watch might see me. Mostly to get a lay of the land, what streets dead-ended and which were an escape. If I wanted more answers I’d have to come back here. If I needed to get out fast, I’d need to know where the exits were.

  After that, and getting tired of the constant roar of airplanes, I headed back to civilization.

  But stopped on the way. First for a late lunch of mostly grease and fat at a Burger Thing. The lizard brain that lusted after calories to survive a famine was happy. The rest of me would pay for it later, but I was hungry and it was convenient.

  From there I drove to the address of the chemistry teacher. It was around the time school would let out. I was hoping I could catch her when she got home. Of course, if she decided to run errands or go to the gym, I was shit out of luck. I’d give her until I needed a bathroom break, including enough time to safely get to the bathroom. Knowing my bladder, I calculated that to be about half an hour.

  She also lived in an apartment building, still soulless in my opinion, but much nicer than that one by the airport. Cookie cutter, but not the basic box shape of the other, with balconies tastefully shielded from too much contact with your neighbors, large enough for a grill and a few chairs. I parked in one of the spots marked for visitors, where I could see her unit.

  Fifteen minutes later, a used Prius pulled into the parking spot reserved for it.

  I watched her get out. She opened the back and dug for some bags.

  I got out and approached her.

  “Ms. Gardner?”

  She whirled around at me—surprise, yes, but more than that. Maybe she was the nervous type. Or maybe she had something to be afraid of.

  I flashed my license at her. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Let me see that,” she said, still guarded.

  I handed it to her. She had a right to see it. Her reaction was curious. One of the things that works for me in this business is that I’m a woman; people don’t usually feel threatened. We were in clear view of anyone in about ten different apartments and yelling distance of about fifty.

  After reading my license at least twice, she said, “Who are you and what do you want?”

  Not the question I’d expected after she’d just scrutinized a document with my name and occupation on it. Maybe Eddie had gotten her involved in meth making and she had reasons to be nervous. Or his murder had scared her.

  I didn’t want to step on to any land mines, so I quelled my sarcastic impulse to ask if she’d like to read my license again.

  I did reach and take it back from her, though. They’re a pain to get and a pain to replace.

  “My name is Michele Knight and I’m a licensed private investigator here in Louisiana. I’ve been hired to look into—”

  “I don’t know what you want, but I know nothing about it. Please leave me alone.”

  “If you don’t know what I want, how do you know you don’t know anything about it?” I asked. Pointing out her contradiction took her aback. But not enough to make her talk.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not talking to you.”

  “What are you so afraid of?”

  She stared at me. Watery gray eyes behind thick glasses. Her mouth open, emphasizing her weak chin. No, not a pretty woman, not the kind men would notice. I was hoping there was some other spark in her, a fierce intelligence, a searching curiosity, but at the moment, she was so closed down, I could see nothing save her outward appearance. Wearing a pink dress that tried to look stylish but didn’t hang right on her gawky frame, medium height, taken down an inch or so by a hunched back and sloping shoulders. Lank brown hair, growing long past the last haircut. A nose slightly too big for her face, as if emphasizing the narrow, receding chin.

  She turned her back to me, again digging in her car for her school supplies.

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” she mumbled.

  “Except having a conversation with me,” I pointed out. “I’m not the police, I can’t arrest you.”

  “I knew that.”

  Okay, wrong guess. She wasn’t doing anything illegal. Or illegal enough that being put in jail was her primary concern.

  “You worried that whoever killed Eddie might come for you?”

  She turned, almost dropping her canvas bag of books save the white-knuckled grip she had on it. “How do you know about that?”

  “That he was killed? It’s been on the news.”

  “No, not that. Why do you think he has anything to do with me?”

  I considered saying, because of your reaction. But that was too close to blaming the victim.

  “I’ve been hired to investigate some of his activities. Your name came up.”

  “Came up? How?”

  “Anything you say to me will be confidential.” Unless you confess to murdering him. “As I won’t bring up your name or identity to anyone, I have to do the same for the other people I talk to.”

  “I can’t imagine how my name came up. I don’t know him.”

  “Look, you can answer my questions truthfully, or you can keep lying and make me suspicious. This is a murder investigation. Of course you knew him. You dated him until you discovered what a lout he truly was.”

  “You can’t know that,” she gasped.

  “I’m not the bad guy,” I said. “I’m not here to hurt you. I can even help you, if you let me. If I can find out, others can find out. You’re safer talking to me.”

  “I’m not safe talking to anyone.”

  “You’re not safe being silent, either,” I pointed out.

  She started to cry.

  I reached into her car, took the other bag there, and said, “Let’s go inside and talk.”

  She merely nodded and led the way to her door, still saying nothing as she found her keys and opened it. The inside echoed the outside. Maybe it came furnished, but everything matched in a bland, designer way, as if bought in a set from a store that aimed for the middle of the middle class, beige and cream, a splash of a trendy red as the latest accent color.

  She dropped her bag amidst all this beige-ness, finally speaking only to excuse herself to go to the bathroom.

  I looked around the room: open concept with the living area flowing into the kitchen. Also, nicely done, the requisite granite countertops, a neutral color with stainless steel appliances. Other th
an a few chemistry books on the built-in bookshelves, cream colored and only capable of holding a paltry number of books, more to display pictures or knickknacks, the inside matched the outside—it could have been any place, with no clear view of the person who actually lived here.

  She returned, her nose pink from blowing.

  “How did you find out?” she demanded.

  “I asked questions. I got answers. No one named your name, but enough bits and pieces fell together to lead me to you.” That was as much as I was going to answer. “How did you meet Eddie?”

  She flopped down on the couch. I copied her, sitting just across on the perfectly matched love seat.

  Something in her changed; no, not a spark, but giving up. As if this was a battle and she had lost. The words tumbled out. She’d been convinced to go out with some of her old high school friends, a reunion of sorts. But it turned out they wanted to go to a singles bar; if they got lucky, the reunion was history. Two of her friends had peeled off, leaving her stuck with the other “ugly” woman, too heavy to be considered attractive. At least in the shallow world of straight bars. They’d finished their drinks. “More than I’m used to,” she explained, when Eddie approached them. He flirted with them both, bought another round—or two—of drinks. Offered to walk them to their cars. Got serious in his flirting in the parking lot. Enid—yes, she went by that. I would have ditched it for her middle name of Emily—“won” because she didn’t have a roommate. Not that anything happened then, she assured me. He called the next day, and they met for dinner and a movie. He told her he really liked smart women, was bored with the bimbos. (Okay, warning sign, if he calls another woman a bimbo, he’s not very likely to be an enlightened man who actually likes women.) He came home with her that night and they dated for about six weeks.

  “Why’d you break up with him?” I’d heard Brandon’s more than secondhand version; I wanted to hear hers.

  She started crying again.

  “I found one of those pictures on his phone.”

  “What kind of pictures?” Again, I wanted to see what she’d say.

  “You know, of another woman.”

  “Maybe his sister?”

  “No,” she said, wiping her face with her sleeve. “It was a girly shot.”

  “A naked woman?”

  She nodded, then hurried to explain. “I thought we were dating seriously, that he shouldn’t be looking at other women. Not like that. I asked him to get rid of them.”

  “Them? He had more than just one?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know that then. I told him if he wanted to keep seeing me, he needed to get rid of them…it.”

  Yeah, that was her reaction to knowing he had titty shots of too-young girls. Maybe she thought she could reform him.

  “He laughed at me. And…told me I was the ugliest girl he’d ever…slept with.”

  Oh, Eddie, such a white knight. She had clearly amended his “ever fucked” to the more polite “slept with.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “He was over here almost every night, he really liked having sex with me. Said I had a great body.”

  I kept my eyes focused on her face. This was not the time to assess her body. Maybe she did. Or maybe it was another one of his lies.

  “If that doesn’t keep a man satisfied, what the hell does?” She let out another sob. “Two or three times a night. I did everything he asked. Oral sex riding in his car. We even tried anal once, but it hurt. We stopped right after he came.”

  No, I did not want to know this. But I let her keep talking. She was as close as I’d gotten to anyone who knew Eddie.

  “Why would he do that to me?” she wailed.

  I considered pointing out it was because she let him, both the painful sex and what she really meant, pretending to like her to get sex. It almost never works.

  “So, he broke up with you?” I asked, handing her a tissue from a tastefully beige box next to the couch.

  “He said he needed those pictures to get horny enough to have sex with me. But that’s not true, he came here, I’d cook dinner, then we’d have sex. He wasn’t looking at those pictures the whole time.”

  “When did you realize he had more than just one?”

  Another sob. “He showed them to me. Made me look at them. Said we could do porn together, but he wasn’t giving them up.”

  “How many did he show you?”

  And another sob. “I don’t know, some, a few. He just flashed them at me.”

  “When did you see the one of Tiffany?”

  She rocked back in the couch. “I never saw her.”

  Too quick a denial. If she truly hadn’t seen a picture from one of the students at her school—with the suicide, she had to know who Tiffany was—she would have been shocked or upset or disbelieving. Not this quick dismissal.

  “Did you kill him?” Even if she did, she’d deny it, but I wanted to see her reaction.

  Another wail, “No! I loved him! I didn’t kill him. The last thing I wanted was him to be dead!”

  “Even after he treated you that way? All the other women he’d been interested in?” I asked.

  “We could have worked it out. I know he was better than that. Just not educated enough and he hung out with the wrong people. They led him astray. Under it all, he was a nice guy!”

  Oh, wow, she was living in a pink-colored fantasy world. This would probably take years of therapy to get over. Since I didn’t have years, I just said, “You might be right. Who do you think could have killed him?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “You loved Eddie, you can’t want his killer to go free. If you talk to me, I can help. I can work with the police, keep you out of it. Tell me what you know.”

  “I know if I talk, they’ll kill me. I hate that they killed him, but I don’t want to die.”

  Ah, clarity. She loved him, but not enough to do anything about his killer.

  “Why would they come after you?”

  That brought another bout of crying and me handing her a few more tissues.

  Finally, she said, “It’s the drugs.”

  “What drugs?”

  “I knew we could work it out, that we were meant to be together. He just needed to understand how much I loved him.”

  “What happened?” I needed to keep her talking, despite her crying.

  “I went to see him. He didn’t like me to come to his place; it’s not as nice as mine.”

  “Where did he live?” Certainly the police had tossed his apartment, but I could talk to some of the neighbors, especially the ones who wouldn’t talk to the police.

  “A place out by the airport.” She didn’t know the address, but described it. No, not the “no drugs” one near the body shop, but one probably just like it a few blocks away.

  “So you went to his place?”

  “Yes, just to talk to him. I knocked and he called to come on in, the door was open, so I did. But I guess he wasn’t expecting me. He started yelling, told me I had to leave, he was meeting a business partner and it wasn’t a good time. I could tell he wanted to talk to me, but it needed to be a different time.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “He told me. Said I was right, we needed to talk. We could work things out, but we could do it later.”

  “How did drugs get involved?”

  “I saw something on his table that looked like white powder all wrapped up in plastic wrap. Like those ones you see on the news when they did a drug bust. I told him if he needed money, I could help. But he said, no, it wasn’t what it looked like and he’d explain later.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “He walked me out. Just as we got down the stairs, a man showed up. I guess the one he was expecting. He was so gallant, told him we met at the door and I hadn’t even been inside.”

  Must keep face neutral. Oh, yeah, gallant. Saving his ass by claiming he hadn’t been sloppy enough to let his latest sex toy walk into a drug deal. That w
as for him, not for you.

  “He even walked me to my car, making his friend wait.”

  “Did you get a name of the friend?”

  “No, Eddie was in too much of a hurry to introduce us. Oh, but he did call him Steve. I think. Something like that.”

  “What did he look like?” She was no longer questioning my questions. While it worked for me, that wasn’t a good sign. It meant she wasn’t looking where she was going. Yeah, I was safe, but she had no way to really know that.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I was so focused on Eddie. So happy that I was right and he wanted to see me again.”

  “Was he taller than you?” After asking about twenty questions—taller, shorter, heavy or not, the best I could get out of her was that “Steve,” if that was his name, was taller than most girls, but not so tall for a guy, sandy or light brown or dark blond hair, no idea of eye color, not too heavy, but a beer gut, wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. Oh, he didn’t smell nice, like he was a day or two beyond needing a shower. Eddie always smelled nice. He showered regularly. Thanks, I really wanted to know that.

  Then she started to cry again. More tissues. Close to emptying the box.

  That was the last time she saw Eddie.

  Once she stopped crying—a good five minutes’ worth; yes, I looked at my watch while she was blowing her nose—I asked, “Have you talked to the police about this?”

  “No! I’m not stupid. If I talk to them, then whoever killed Eddie will have a reason to kill me. As long as I’m silent and leave them alone, I’m safe.”

  I went back and forth with her. As long as there was a risk she could talk, they had a reason to kill her. If she talked to the police, she was actually safer. Killing her would only add another murder charge.

  She was adamant that her safety was in her silence. That choice left her living her beige life, no change in routine, not having to risk being pried from her rose-colored illusion that Eddie had loved her.

  I did try my best to convince her there was no safety in her inaction, but she claimed Eddie wouldn’t have told them who she was, so the only way they could know was if she went to the police.