Peggy Sue Got Murdered Read online

  Joining Isabel was the last thing she felt like doing, but she couldn't think of a graceful way to avoid it. So, hoisting a socially acceptable smile onto her lips, she entered the parlor.

  Isabel was seated on the striped couch. Her sweater, a fluffy cashmere, hung fetchingly off the shoulder. She seemed unsurprised to see M. J.; in fact, she appeared to have expected her.

  "Hope you haven't been waiting long," said M. J. "I don't know when Adam's expected home."

  "He gets home at six o'clock," said Isabel.

  "Did he call?"

  "No. That's when he always gets home."

  "Oh." M. J. sat down in the Queen Anne chair and wondered what else Isabel knew about Adam's habits. Probably more than I ever will. She glanced at the end table and saw the empty teacup, the plate of biscuits and jam. The book Isabel had been reading lay beside her on the couch-the title was in French. The very air held the scent of her perfume-something cool, something elegant; no drugstore florals for her.

  "Six o'clock is his usual time," Isabel went on, pouring more tea into her cup. "Unless it's Wednesday, when he kicks off early and gets home around five. He occasionally has a drink before supper-Scotch, heavy on the soda-and perhaps a glass of wine with his meal, but only one glass. After supper, he reads. Scientific journals, the latest pharmaceuticals, that sort of thing. He takes his work seriously, you see." She set the teapot back down. "And then he makes time for fun. Which normally includes me." She looked at M. J. and smiled.

  "Just why are you telling me this?"

  "Because there are so many things you don't know about him."

  M. J. let out a breath. "That's true. Not that it makes a difference."

  Isabel cocked her head. "Doesn't it?"

  "If you're telling me all this because you feel threatened, Isabel, don't bother. With me, what you see is what you get. No blue blood, no pedigree." She laughed. "Definitely no class."

  "I didn't mean to put you down," said Isabel hastily. "I simply thought I could clear up a few things about Adam."

  "Such as?"

  "Oh, I don't know…" Isabel shrugged one lustrous white shoulder. "Aspects of his life you may not be familiar with. It must seem quite disorienting. Being thrust into this huge old house. All these portraits of strangers hanging on the walls. And then there's a whole circle of his friends you've never met."

  "I guess you know them all."

  "We grew up in that same circle, Adam and I.I knew Georgina. I watched the whole sad affair. And I was there when he needed a friend." She paused, and added significantly, "I'm still here." And I'll be here long after you're gone, was the unspoken message. Isabel took a sip of tea and set the cup and saucer back down on the end table. "I just wanted you to know that."

  "Why?"

  "I care about Adam. All his friends do. And we'd hate to see him… unhappy."

  M. J.'s chin shot up. "Meaning what?"

  "Adam needs someone who can hold her own. In this house, at the club. At the dozens of social functions a man in his position has to attend. It's only fair that you know what to expect."

  M. J. laughed. "Hey, I'm not after the job of lady of the house. He's just putting me up for awhile. And we needed each other's help."

  "And do you still need each other's help?"

  M. J. paused. The truth was that they didn't. Esterhaus was dead. There was nothing to hide from now, nothing to keep her there.

  Except this crazy hope that things could still work out between us.

  Isabel rose. "Just a few things to consider," she said. "Think about it."

  M. J. did think about it. She thought about it as Isabel walked out the front door, as the Mercedes drove down the driveway. She thought about the gap between Surry Heights and South Lexington-a distance measured not in miles but in universes. She thought about country clubs and back alleys, picket fences and barbed wire.

  And she thought about her heart, recently healed, and how long it takes to put the pieces back together when once it's broken.

  She went upstairs, collected her toothbrush and underwear, and came back down again.

  Thomas, carrying a tray of fresh tea and biscuits, met her in the foyer. "Dr. Novak," he said. "I was just bringing this in to you."

  "Thanks. But I'm on my way out."

  He frowned when he saw the car keys she'd already removed from her purse. "When shall I tell Mr. Q. you'll be returning?"

  "Tell him… tell him I'll be in touch," she said, and walked out of the house.

  "But, Dr. Novak-"

  She got into her car and started the engine. "You've been great, Thomas!" she called through the car window. "Don't let Miss Calderwood push you around." As she drove off, she could see him in her rearview mirror, still staring after her in puzzlement.

  The stone pillars lay ahead. She was in such a hurry to get away, she almost careened into Adam's Volvo, driving in through the gate. He skidded to a stop at the side of the road.

  "M. J.?" he yelled. "Where are you going?"

  "I'll call you!" she yelled back, and kept on driving.

  A half mile later, she glanced in her mirror and saw, through a film of tears, that the road behind her was empty. He hadn't followed her. She blinked the tears away and gripped the steering wheel more tightly.

  She drove on, toward the city.

  Away from Adam.

  I'll call you . What the hell did that mean?

  Adam watched M. J.'s taillights disappear into the dusk and wondered when she'd be back. Had there been a call from the morgue? Some urgent reason for her to rush to work? An emergency autopsy? he thought with a laugh. Right.

  He pulled in front of the house and parked. Even before he'd climbed the front steps, Thomas had appeared in the doorway.

  "Mr. Q.!"

  "Evening, Thomas. What's up?"

  "I was about to ask you. Dr. Novak just left."

  "Yes, I passed her at the gate."

  "No, I mean she's left. Taken her things with her."

  "What?" Adam turned and stared up the driveway. By now, she would be a good mile or more away, perhaps already turning onto the freeway. He'd never be able to catch up with her in time.

  He looked back at Thomas. "Did she say why was leaving?"

  Thomas shrugged. "Not a word."

  "Did she say anything?"

  "I never had the opportunity to speak with her. She and Miss Calderwood were taking tea, and-"

  "Isabel was here?"

  "Why, yes. She left a short time before Dr. Novak did."

  At once, Adam turned and headed to his car.

  "Mr. Q.! Where are you going?"

  "Isabel's house!" he snapped.

  "Will you be there for the evening?"

  "Just a few minutes!" Adam gunned the engine and roared out of the driveway. "Just long enough," he added under his breath, "to wring her neck."

  Isabel was home. He saw her Mercedes parked in the garage, the groundsman busy polishing the flanks to a gleaming finish. Adam took the front steps two at a time. He didn't bother to knock; he just walked in the door and yelled: "Isabel!"

  She appeared, smiling, at the top of the stairs. "Why, Adam. How unexpected-"

  "What did you say to her?"

  Isabel shook her head innocently. "To whom?"

  "M. J."

  "Ah." With new comprehension in her gaze, Isabel glided down the stairs. "We spoke," she admitted. "But nothing of earth-shattering significance."

  "What did you say?"

  She came to a stop on the bottom step. The crystal chandelier above spilled its pool of sparkling light onto her hair. "I only told her that I understood the difficulties she must be having. The transition to a large house. A new circle of friends. She's not having an easy time of it, Adam."

  "Not with friends like you."

  Her chin jutted up. "I was only offering her my advice. And sympathy."

  "Isabel." He sighed. "I've known you a long time. We've shared some… reasonably enjoyable moments together. But I'
ve never known you to be, in any way, shape, or form, sympathetic to anyone. Except maybe yourself."

  She reacted with a wounded look. "What's gotten into you, Adam? I hardly know you anymore. It scares me, the way you've changed."

  "Does it?" He turned and reached for the door. "Then I guess the truth is frightening."

  "Adam! Look at who she is, where she comes from! I'm telling you this as a friend. I don't want to see you make a mistake."

  "The only mistake I ever made," he said, walking out of the house, "was calling you a friend." He slammed the door shut behind him, got back in his car, and drove home.

  He spent all evening trying to locate M. J. He called the city morgue. He called Lou Beamis. He even called Ed Novak. No one knew where she'd gone, where she was spending the night. Or, if they knew, they weren't telling him.

  At well past midnight, he went up to bed in frustration. There, lying in the darkness, Isabel's words came back to assail him. Look at who she is, where she comes from. He asked himself over and over if it made a difference to him.

  And the honest answer was: Hell, no.

  He'd already had a "proper" marriage, to a proper woman. Georgina was everything the social register required: blue-blooded, wealthy, well-glossed by finishing school. Together they were, by the standards of their social set, the perfect couple.

  They had been miserable.

  So much for proper partners.

  M. J. Novak's origins, her hardscrabble youth, were, if anything, an asset. She was a survivor, a woman who'd wrestled the challenges life had thrown at her and come out the stronger for it. Could any of his friends, with their money and their platinum exteriors, have done the same? he wondered.

  And then, even more troubling, was the next thought: Could he have?

  It was something he'd never know, could never know.

  Not until he was put to the test.

  The phone was ringing when M. J. walked into her office the next morning. She ignored it. After all, it was only seven-thirty; let someone else pick up the line. Calmly she hung up her coat, slid her purse in the desk drawer, revved up Mr. Coffee for a six-cup pot. An IV infusion of caffeine was what she really needed this morning. It had been a sleepless night on a lumpy motel bed, and she was feeling as alert as a grizzly bear in January and just about as cheerful.

  She found her desk littered with pink message slips, taped in a haphazard collage. Calls from her overwhelmed insurance agent, from the DA's, from defense attorneys, from a mortuary. And from Adam, of course-five calls, judging by the number of slips. On the last slip, the night tech had scrawled in frustration: "Call this guy, will ya?" M. J. crumpled up all the message slips from Adam and tossed them in the trash can.

  The phone rang. She frowned at it, watched it ring once, twice, three times. Wearily she picked it up. "M. J. Novak."

  "M. J.! I've been trying to reach you-"

  "Morning, Adam. How're things?"

  There was a long pause. "Obviously," he said, "we have to talk."

  "About what?"

  "About why you left."

  "Simple." She leaned back and propped her feet up on a chair. "It was time to leave. You've been great to me, Adam. You really have. But I didn't want to wear out the welcome. And I had to find my own place eventually, so I-"

  "So you ran."

  "No. I walked."

  "You turned tail and ran."

  Her spine stiffened. "And what, exactly, am I supposed to be running from?"

  "From me. From the chance it might not work."

  "Look, I have things to do right now-"

  "Is it so hard for you, M. J., to stick your neck out? It's not easy for me, either. I take a step toward you, you take a step back. I say the wrong thing, look at you the wrong way, and you're off like a shot. I don't know how to deal with it."

  "Then don't."

  "Is that what you really want?"

  She sighed. "I don't know. Honestly, I don't know what I want."

  "I think you do. But you're too scared to follow your heart."

  "How the hell do you know what's in my heart?"

  "Wild guess?"

  "It's not like Cinderella, okay?" she snapped. "Girls from the Projects don't have fairy godmothers to spiff them up. And they don't find happily-ever-afters in Surry Heights. Isabel gave me the straight scoop and I appreciate that. I'd be out to sea with your country club set. Too many damn forks on the table. Too many cute French words. Face it, I can't ski, I can't ride a horse, and I can't tell the difference between Burgundy and Beaujolais. It's all red wine to me. I don't see any way of getting past that. No matter how much you may lust after my body, you'll find after a while that it isn't enough. You'll want a fancier package. And I'll just want to be me."

  "I never took you for a coward before."

  She laughed. "Go ahead, insult me if it makes you feel better."

  "You'll risk your neck for an old car. You'll march into a damn combat zone without blinking. But you're too scared to take a chance on me."

  "You're a long shot, Quantrell."

  "So are you. But I'm not running."

  She laughed again. "You will. A few bumps in the road. A few rough times. It'll be easy for you to leave me."

  "You must think I'm pretty spineless."

  "I think you're human. Nice, but human. And humans always choose the easy way out."

  "Easy?" Now it was his turn to laugh. "If I wanted easy, I wouldn't be having this conversation. And I wouldn't be asking you out to lunch."

  She paused. "Lunch?"

  "You know. As in a meal, traditionally taken at midday. I'll pick you up at noon. Restaurant of your choice."

  "I can't," she said, glancing at one of the message slips taped to her desk. She suddenly noticed it was from the Greenwood Mortuary, in response to a call she'd made to them yesterday.

  "Can't?" he asked. "Or won't?"

  "Can't," she said, and folded the slip in half. "I have another engagement."

  "Where are you going?"

  "A burial."

  Grim affairs, burials. Grimmer still is a pauper's burial. There are no gaudy sprays of gladioli, no wreaths, no sobbing family and friends. There is just a coffin and a muddy hole in the ground. And the burial crew, of course: in this case, two sallow-faced gravediggers, their hats dripping with rain, and a blacksuited official from the Greenwood Mortuary, huddled beneath an umbrella. Peggy Sue Barnett was being laid to her everlasting rest in the company of total strangers.

  M. J. stood in the shelter of a nearby maple tree and sadly watched the proceedings. It was the starkest of ceremonies, words uttered tonelessly under gray skies, rain splattering the coffin. The official kept glancing around, as though to confirm that he was playing to an audience-any audience. At least I'm here, thought M. J. Even if I am just another stranger at her graveside. A short distance away, Vince Shradick also stood watching the scene. Cemeteries were routine stops for the boys from Homicide. They knew that two types of people attended victims' funerals: those who came to mourn, and those who came to gloat.

  In Peggy Sue Barnett's case, no one at all appeared. Those who passed through the cemetery this afternoon seemed intent on their own business: a couple, bearing flowers to a loved one; an elderly woman, picking dead leaves off a grave; a groundskeeper, rattling by in a golf cart filled with tools. They all glanced at the coffin, but their looks were only mildly curious.

  The rain let up to a fine drizzle. In a still mist, the burial crew set to work, shoveling earth into the trench. Shradick came over to M. J. and muttered, "This was a bust. Not a goddamn soul." He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. "And I'll probably catch pneumonia for my trouble."

  "You'd think there'd be someone," said M. J.

  "Weather might have something to do with it." Shradick glanced up at the sky and pulled his raincoat closer. "Or maybe she didn't have any friends."

  "Everyone has a connection. To someone."

  "Well, I think we got us a d
ead end." Shradick looked back at the grave. "Real dead."

  "So there's nothing new?"

  "Nada. Lou's ready to call it quits. Told me not to bother coming out here today."

  "But you came."

  "Hate to walk away from a case. Even if Lou thinks it's a waste of time."

  They watched as the last shovelful of dirt was tossed onto the grave. The crew patted it down, gave their handiwork one final inspection, and walked away.

  After awhile, so did Shradick.

  M. J. was left standing alone under the tree. Slowly she crossed the wet grass to the grave and stared down at the mound. There was no headstone yet, no marker. Nothing to identify the woman who lay beneath this bare pile of dirt. Who were you, Peggy Sue Burnett? Were you so alone in this world that no one even noticed when you left it?

  "It's not as if you can do anything about it." said a voice behind her.

  She turned and saw Adam. He was standing a few feet away, mist sheening his hair.

  She looked back down at the grave. "I know."

  "So why did you come?"

  "I guess I feel sorry for her. For anyone who doesn't have a mourner to her name."

  Adam came to stand beside her. "You don't know a thing about her, M. J. Maybe she didn't want any friends. Or deserve any friends. Maybe she was a monster."

  "Or just a victim."

  He took her arm. "We'll never know. So let's just go inside somewhere. Get warm and dry."

  "I have to go back to work."

  "You have to stop being afraid of me."

  She frowned at him. "What makes you think I'm afraid of anything?"

  "The running. It's not that I don't understand it. But don't close up on me because of what I might or might not do. Don't hide."

  "From you?" She laughed. "I don't have to hide from any…" She paused as a flicker of movement drifted through her peripheral vision. She focused on two figures, a woman and a child, both dressed in black, standing beneath a distant tree. It was an eerie apparition, almost ghostly through the mist. They seemed to be gazing in her direction, their faces very still and solemn. Or was it Peggy Sue Harriett's grave they were looking at?

  Suddenly the woman noticed that M. J. had spotted them. At once the woman grabbed the child's hand and began to lead her away, across the grass.