I Love You More: A Novel (10 page)

“Sure. And what about your malts?”

“What about them?”

“They any good? Oh, that’s right, you probably wouldn’t know since milk comes from a cow.”

“Funny,” she said. “They’re called Heavenly Malts, aren’t they?”

“Then I’ll have a vanilla malt too.”

“Same for me,” Mack said.

“Just the malt?” Belinda asked.

“No, the burger too, but no cheese.”

Belinda yelled our order to the cook, and then went back behind the counter where she seemed to be in deep discussion with a young man on one of the barstools. He sported a similar hairdo and nose ring, and very tight black jeans.

“So what do you think?” I asked Mack.

“Those nose rings look like they’d hurt,” he said.

“I mean about the case,” I said.

“Well, for one thing, unless we can verify that Roberta Miles was at the Woodlands, her alibi is weak. Wildacres Retreat is roughly the same distance from Cooper’s as Boone is.”

“You’re saying she could’ve shot Lane and made it to the writers’ retreat by noon?”

“Easy,” Mack said. “If she didn’t stop for breakfast and tea.”

“But Lane got shot at seven fifteen. She would’ve had to leave a lot earlier than seven.”

“Maybe she lied; I’ll check with the mother. And I don’t buy what she said about not knowing her husband was missing. I mean, who doesn’t know their spouse, shit even their roommate, is missing when they don’t see or hear from him in nearly two weeks? I don’t care how diligent she is about avoiding negative energy, she can’t avoid life. What? Does she live in a gopher hole?”

“It’s a little like that up here,” I said.

“You mean you believe her?”

“I didn’t say that. What about the other two wives?”

“Julie Lane’s alibi checks out. She was representing her architectural firm at some meeting in Philadelphia. Called a ‘design charrette.’ Apparently everyone working on the project, including the local community, draws the building together. Can you imagine? Getting paid to sit around some table drawing pictures? Sounds like a junket to me. And, if we believe the kid’s version of what happened the day of the murder, it lets Diana Lane off the hook.”

“It’s not like the two of them had time to get their stories straight,” I said. “Not to mention her lab work came back negative for blood and gunshot residue.”

“Funny, though, that she didn’t call 911.”

Belinda delivered our burgers and malts. She looked as if she wanted to ask us what we’d been talking about. She probably didn’t encounter a couple of suits driving an unmarked black Buick every day.

“Is there anything else I can get you?”

“Nope, looks good,” I said.

She hovered for a moment, but then went off to take another order.

We devoured our burgers without speaking. After I sucked up the remaining drops of my malt, which had definitely lived up to its name, I asked Mack where we’d left off.

“Diana Lane not calling 911.”

“Maybe she just didn’t think to,” I said. “She was obviously in shock.”

“Or maybe she was buying time,” Mack said.

“For what?”

“For her accomplices to get away.”

“Accomplices?”

“The other wives.”

“You think they did it together? That’s a leap.”

“I’m just throwing the idea out there. The blond-hair thing is pretty weird. I mean the exact same color, style, and length? What’s up with that? And what about their answers? That whole ‘don’t call me ma’am’ thing for instance. Julie Lane said something very similar when I talked to her. How about the other Mrs. Lane?”

“Which other Mrs. Lane?”

“The first one. Diana. Geez, this is confusing.”

“What about her?”

“Did she say anything about not calling her ma’am?”

“Not that I remember. But even if she had, lots of women don’t like to be called ma’am. It’s some sort of feminist thing. I admit the hair stuff is strange. Maybe our vic asked them to wear their hair that way, and besides, if they were trying to elude us, wouldn’t they have made an effort to look as different as possible?”

“Don’t you find it odd that Diana Lane knew exactly how long her swim took? Or that she just happened to return to the beach house fifteen minutes after the murder. There was no gun; we tore that place apart. So obviously whoever pulled the trigger took it with her.”

“Or him,” I said.

“So you’re still saying burglary?”

“I’m
saying
that things aren’t always as they appear.”

“How so?” Mack asked.

“Agatha Christie.
Murder on the Orient Express
.”

“Let me guess,” Mack said. “Another movie analogy.”

“Hear me out,” I said. “A murder takes place on a train. The Belgian detective Hercule Poirot investigates and finds that the dead passenger, Ratchett, is really a notorious criminal named Cassetti, who kidnapped and killed the three-year-old heiress Daisy Armstrong. Turns out each of the twelve passengers had a connection with the kid, and one by one stabbed Cassetti in his sleep, but in the end, Poirot pins the murder on an unknown assailant who secretly boarded the train during the night.”

“Wow,” Mack said. “He let them get away with it?”

“He thought the guy deserved it,” I said. “But that isn’t the point.”

“What is?”

“
We
knew the passengers had murdered Cassetti. We watched it. But if we hadn’t, if the scene of the actual murder had been cut, we might have bought Poirot’s theory about a thief boarding the train in the night. It was
plausible
.”

“I don’t get it,” Mack said. “You yourself said it was the passengers, that Poirot made the thief thing up.”

“The point is, you and me, we’re each playing a different movie in our minds where this case is concerned. What we need to do is get rid of any of the scenes we’ve imagined but can’t substantiate. I was thinking about what Diana Lane said about her husband always having cash on him when they traveled. Since we didn’t find any at the scene, I decided to check that out. Turns out our vic paid for everything with cash. I’m betting the wives aren’t the only ones who knew that.”

“Who doesn’t use credit cards?” Mack asked.

“Somebody who doesn’t want a paper trail,” I said. “And you don’t think that’s sketchy? There may be more to Oliver Lane than polygamy.”

“I don’t know,” Mack said. “A robbery angle seems like a stretch.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“So what now?”

“We do our job. We check into Roberta Miles’s alibi. Recheck the other wives’. We find out if anyone saw a suspicious car either on the ferry or the island, or a woman matching either Julie Lane’s or Roberta Miles’s description near the beach house the morning of the murder. We keep looking for that gun. We do a deeper investigation into Oliver Lane’s background. Talk to his therapist, or whatever doctor prescribed those pills I found at the scene. Check in with his work colleagues again; make sure we didn’t miss anyone. See if any of his clients had it in for him. Seems he represented some mean dudes, Mafia types, wealthy bankers, shady politicians. And we don’t make any judgments until we’ve got something concrete. At this point, all that other stuff—the timing of the murder, the wives’ answers, Diana Lane’s arrival at the scene—could just be coincidences.”

“Since when do you believe in coincidences?” Mack asked.

We didn’t see Detective Kennedy again until he found out about Bert.

It must’ve been September by then. I remember I was wearing my school uniform, a plaid skirt, white shirt, and navy cardigan, so obviously school had started. I looked through the peephole when the doorbell rang.

“Hi, Picasso,” Detective Kennedy said when I opened the wood door. I didn’t unlock the screen door.

“Mama’s not home,” I said.

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

I shook my head. “She’s at a Junior League meeting.”

“Well then, I’ll just wait on the porch.”

Our house, which is yellow with black shutters, a red door, and a full front porch, sits farther back from the street than most of the ones around us, so the driveway is long. The garage sits back even farther and doesn’t attach. Before I was born, it was just a garage, but Daddy had a second floor built on top of it where Mama could paint. If I think real hard I can still get a hazy image of Mama painting. I remember her holding the handle of one brush between her teeth while gliding another across the canvas, jars and jars of paints, cans of brushes of various sizes, the smell
of the turpentine, the feel of the wet paint on my fingertips, the colors, gobs and peaks and squirts of color on the palette and canvas like a rainbow of icing on a dream cake. But that was so long ago. I watched Detective Kennedy from the picture window in the living room. He took off his suit coat, laid it carefully over the back of the porch swing, and sat on one of the rocking chairs for a while. Then he got up, fast, like he had just that second remembered something, went down the steps, and headed toward the driveway. I couldn’t see him after that. In a few minutes, I heard the basketball hitting the backboard above the garage door. I went outside. Detective Kennedy was running back and forth dribbling the ball like Daddy used to do.

“Game of horse?” he asked.

“Okay,” I said.

“Ladies first.” He tossed me the ball.

I stood with my legs spread on the white line that Daddy had painted on the driveway, bent forward at my waist, pushed the ball back between my legs, aimed, and swung it into the air. Detective Kennedy caught the ball when it went through the hoop.

“Good shot,” he said. “Do you always throw the ball underhanded like that?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“Well, it’s kind of a girl way to do it, don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

“Do you want to learn how to do it the way the pros do?”

“Okay,” I said.

“One free shot a turn. How’s that sound?”

“Good.”

I made most of the girl shots, but my free shots didn’t even make it all the way to the basket.

“Hey,” Detective Kennedy said when he saw my disappointment.
“You just learned how to do it. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ll get better.”

I was lining up one of my free shots when Mama drove up.

“To what do we owe this pleasure, Detective?” Mama asked when she got out of the car. She’d parked at the very end of the driveway. She looked annoyed like she always did when she couldn’t pull the car into the garage.

“Ma’am,” Detective Kennedy said and nodded. “You probably aren’t going to believe that I just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“You’re right,” she said, “I’m not.”

“Mama, watch.” I repositioned myself and tossed the ball. It made a clean swooshing sound as it went through the net. I couldn’t believe it.

“Yes,” Detective Kennedy said. “That’s what I mean.” He ran to me and raised his hand for a high five. “Exceptional shot, Picasso.”

We clapped.

“I suppose I don’t have any choice but to invite you in,” Mama said to Detective Kennedy.

“We can sit on the porch if you’d prefer,” he said. “Your rocking chairs are quite comfortable. You can even take mine; it’s all warmed up.”

“I’d really rather not advertise your presence to the neighbors,” Mama said.

Detective Kennedy looked at me, raised his eyebrows, and made a smile that looked a lot like Daddy’s secret smile. “You got any of that sweet tea?” He grabbed his suit coat from the porch swing, put it on, and followed Mama inside.

“The Toyota you drove up in, is that yours?” Detective Kennedy asked, as Mama headed to the refrigerator.

“Yes, why?”

“I seem to recall you were driving a BMW on Cooper’s Island.”

“That was Oliver’s. It’s in the garage. Do you know anyone interested in an overpriced car?”

“So you’re looking to sell it?”

“I certainly don’t need it anymore,” Mama said as she set the tray on the coffee table. This time she’d brought the entire glass pitcher; the lemons and mint leaves were clearly visible.

Detective Kennedy walked over to Mama’s picture wall while she laid out the coasters and poured the tea.

“Is that you, Picasso?” he asked.

“Right after I was born,” I said.

“You’re much prettier now,” he said.

I laughed. People were always saying how cute newborn babies were, even though they weren’t. I was happy that Detective Kennedy told the truth. I remembered what he said about a sunset making the sea turn colors. I’d googled “watching a sunset from a ferry” and “sunset changing ocean into many colors,” but other than information on sediment cores, fairies, and a page from some book that used a lot of pretty words, I couldn’t find anything that proved what he’d said. I also couldn’t verify the number of stars in the sky.

I saw that he was almost to the church picture of Daddy, Mama, and me, the one like he showed us of Daddy with Jewels and those little boys. I held my breath. Thankfully, all he said was, “Just this one picture of your dad?”

“Daddy didn’t like having his picture taken,” I said.

“Are you going to sit, Detective?” Mama asked.

“May I?” he asked.

She gave him an angry look. “Please. What can I help you with this time?”