Category: Confessions

Chapter 34. A Stone Angel

The door of Jacquetta’s own church, St Barnabas, was locked. This had never happened before. The sign said “mold treatment.” Jacquetta walked around the path to the churchyard and sat on a stone bench in the sunshine, watching the sexton clear graves. Some of the grass had been getting pretty tall!

It was soothing having nothing to do, refusing to think. She tried praying but her mind kept drifting away. Shaming to have to tell Mother Xavier she was right; “I don’t want to be a nun. Turns out what I wanted all along was to be a snoop.”

Being a snoop was endlessly absorbing, like trying to make sense of a forgotten language. Working as an actual detective would not be so much fun, she could tell. For one thing, you could end up shot or burnt. She didn’t envy Benson his gun, his license, or his death.

There ought to be some kind of in-between career, Jacquetta thought. Maybe I can invent something. A helper constrained not by a client’s demands but by some higher purpose. “Will Snoop For Bread.” She recalled how delighted Honey had been raking through Miss Rainbeaux’s possessions. The “cleaned up” version offered to the public at the Open House, Jacquetta hadn’t found nearly so satisfying. “Sister Jacquetta Sorts Your Departed’s Junk.” There it was: a possible business. “A Sister In Need. I do what Relatives Don’t Have Time or Are Too Emotional or Disgusted to Do.”

She smiled as she thought of the business card. It would actually be fun. She could make antique store versus dumpster recommendations without a hidden agenda. “A Sister You Can Trust.” Maybe that was a bit snide!

The sexton finished. He climbed into his cart and tootled away, so Jacquetta stood up to admire his handiwork. There was one place he had missed.

An obelisk dedicated to a 1930’s patriarch and his two – no three wives. A gaggle of children surrounding a stone angel. The smallest stones looked like footstones but, moving the grass with her foot, Jacquetta saw they bore engraving. Babies. “Bequeathed Only for A Moment.” “An Angel Passed Among Us.”

And then she saw it. “Rose-Alice Ramey. August 31, 1962.”

There it was. This is what Beatrix Rainbeaux had seen, this is what started the whole disaster. Hadn’t she told Jacquetta in their only conversation, “I was just at your church recently?”

And she must have wondered about Avalon’s au pair; how she could be from “out of town” and yet have the same name as an infant buried in the St. Barnabas churchyard? And now Beatrix Rainbeaux was dead. Rose-Alice Ramey was the exact right age to be Ricey Kleinemann.
Why had Jacquetta been so stupidly slow about recognizing this fact? Because she was rubbish as a detective, that’s why. Was it also because she liked Rose-Alice? Rose-Alice and she were outsiders together, two of a kind. But the “con” in “con-artist” comes from a criminal gaining trust – gaining undeserved confidence.

Sociopaths were said to be charming. Jacquetta had identified with this hard-working young woman obliged to keep her opinions of her ridiculous employers to herself. Like everyone else, she was yearning for beauty, longing to travel. Jacquetta wanted the murderer to be one of the morally compromised Rainbeaux clan or someone from their cadre of sycophants. But Rose-Alice – she would have to think of her as Ricey now – had snuffed out the life of Honey, a fresh young girl – a striver, a dreamer just like herself – without a second thought.

This monster wore a pretty face. Jacquetta decided the letters were older, probably unconnected with the murders. Ricey flexing her claws. Unable to contain her rage, her hostility, her secret violence, and she tried to siphon it off as harmlessly as she could. But when she gave in to love with her employer’s husband, her secret had been exposed. And who was Jacquetta to judge her for that? She saw George Cleese every day, he had plenty of time to work on her, as Nelson had “worked” Jacquetta.

It was humiliating and enraging and it all made perfect sense. It explained why Miss Rainbeaux hesitated, why the real estate agent was charmed, why the detective relaxed, why Honey let her in.
Jacquetta rushed back to her car. She needed a phone. She need to tell Lt. Marie the whole thing, because Ricey was clearly spinning out of control. She had nothing left to lose.

Jacquetta regretted letting Nelson go: he had a car phone! She couldn’t think of a payphone closer than her apartment – she’d been planning to return anyway. She could think of no reason why the phone wouldn’t work. She didn’t dare wait even returning to the motel before she shared the secret. Ricey was too dangerous. She steeled herself. Grab some clothes and make that call.

Chapter 33. Wildwood

“How about a foot-long chili dog?” Nelson facetiously suggested.

“Absolutely not,” Jacquetta returned, “I need a drink.”

“I know just the place.”

At this hour, Me Ole Matey was empty, but it was so dark you couldn’t tell what time it was. “Seat Yourself” said the sign, so they fought their way through fishing impedimenta to a corner booth.
“Is white wine and kir still your favorite drink?” Nelson asked, signaling for the lone waitress.
Jacquetta had no desire to recall any of those nights.

“No,” she said. ”Just a glass of house red.”

Nelson surprised her by ordering the whole bottle and a slew of appetizers. “The potato skins here are famous,” he said.

Suddenly it was a date.

“So,” Jacquetta hazarded, “Roxelle Shields’ baby girl? Any ideas? We have to have found the right family or she wouldn’t be acting this way.”

“Definitely. Ricey Kleinemann’s Roxelle Shield’s daughter,” he concurred. Jacquetta shuddered. “Means that horrible old woman was Roxelle’s mama. Something went pretty wrong somewhere. Twelve years old is scary young to have a baby. We didn’t even get to mention D.L. LeRoi.”

“I believe her that she doesn’t know where her daughter is,” Nelson said. “Don’t you?”

“I guess so. Seems like we caught her completely by surprise. What do you think is the next move?”

“I have to pray about it.”

That silenced him. When they returned to the car in an hour, feeling much better, there was a message on the car phone from Lt Marie.

“He says you can go back to your apartment. Also, your car is being released. Which do you want first?”

“Thank God,” said Jacquetta, thinking, I need to pick up some clothes. She also wanted to find out if the killer got the datebook. “Car first.”

“Going back to the motel?” he gave her a sidelong look.

“Probably.”

“Need me?”

She faced him. “Not till you’re a free man. Consider your bereavement period over.”

He sighed gustily. “And Sister Jacquetta is back.”

She returned, “You’re welcome.”

Chapter 32. A Brass Ass

As scrub pine gave way to hot dog stands Jacquetta wondered if she should try to talk about last night. It didn’t change anything, and in the morning she had been grateful he didn’t mention it. But now she worried: wouldn’t he think it DID change things? Should she say something and if so, what?

But everything was so up in the air. Part of me was killed with Honey, Jacquetta realized. Funny that she’d never realized they were Siamese twins; mentally and physically connected. Was that true of every relationship? The force of what Nelson had said about bereavement hit her with double power. He said he’d “lost everything.” If so: what was left for her? And how to find out? She wished she’d had the emotional strength to reject his proffered body, but she never had, and she knew perfectly well that was why she had left her job.

Could Nelson be right that she’d contemplated the monastic life just to hide from men and their dangerous allure? She knew what Mother Xavier would say about it; only one way to find out. Ask God.

“Desperado,” Nelson was counting the bars. “Cotton Candy. Brass Ass. There it is.”

At this hour the neon sign depicting the backside of a naked woman aboard a kicking mule wasn’t lit, but the marquee said “Miss Roxelle Shields Appearing Nitely.” From the plethora of parking spaces Nelson chose the one nearest the door. The green vinyl padded door wasn’t locked but the bar was dark.

A bartender was setting up beneath a single spot. He barely looked at them.
“We’re closed.”

“We’re here to interview Miss Shields?” Nelson sounded tentative even to Jacquetta’s ears.

Barman couldn’t have cared less. “Around back.”

Nelson unlocked the car and opened the door.

“You’re using the car to go around back?” Jacquetta questioned.

“Who knows how safe it is back there?” Nelson shrugged.

Wow thought Jacquetta. I never would have thought of that. I need this guy.

“Around back” was a dumpster and a green Corvette. It didn’t appear unsafe.

There was a locked door labeled “Authorized Personnel Only” and “It is a State Crime to block or prop this exit.” Nelson hammered on the battered metal with his fist.

A man wearing a three piece suit a size too small stuck out his balding head. Nelson, who’d had an opportunity to get his story together, flashed his press card.

“We’re here to interview Miss Shields.”

The man took the card and held the door open. The woman behind him was short but her high-heeled boots made up for it. Her white-lace minidress was red-lit by the lights.

“TriCity News Service,” read the man.

Nelson took back his card.

Roxelle put her hands on her hips. “Woman’s Day looking for my recipe for sausage paprikash?” she asked. “Or are your readers wondering what a nice girl like me is doing in a place like this?”

“We’ve got a press release in the office,” said the man helpfully. “I’m her manager.” When he turned around Jacquetta saw he’d drawn his three strands of hair into an unkempt ponytail. He opened the door to a tiny room that seemed to double as a storage space for industrial-sized jars of marinara sauce and cleaning fluid.

Roxelle sat behind the desk, her manager perched unsafely a single buttock on the desk’s edge and Nelson gestured for Jacquetta to take the only chair. It seemed like a good idea as at least some insurance against being thrown out.

“Get me some more bute, Clint,” Roxelle asked, putting one leg up on the desk and unzipping her boot. “You can tell your readers stripping’s hell on the knees.”

“It’s the high heels,” said the manager, producing a syringe kit. “Miss Shields doesn’t get on her knees for anybody.”

“Not anymore,” said Roxelle, her teeth chattering as the needle went in. Under these lights her skin seemed strangely matte white, but her black eyes were old. Impossible mounds of blue-black hair poured down her back. It made Jacquetta’s head hurt to think of trying to hold up so much hair. The manager rummaged in a briefcase for paper.

“So what do your readers want to know?” she asked, relaxing back in the brass-studded captain’s chair. In a sing-song voice she teased, “I was born a poor little gypsy girl in a tiny town in upstate New York.”

Jacquetta had a brainwave. “Devil’s Elbow?”

The shock was palpable. The manager dropped the briefcase in his haste to open the door and usher them out.

“We’re researching the Kleinemann-Lundt case,” said Nelson. Roxelle’s eyes filled with tears.

“Have you found my baby girl?”

“Baby girl?” asked Jacquetta. “I thought you were sisters.”

The manager dumped Jacquetta out of her chair but she resisted ejection. The two women looked at each other; Jacquetta’s flushed skin facing Roxelle’s hard Chinese mask.

“I was only twelve years old,” said Roxelle. “What’s she done now?”

“She’s been sending anonymous letters to people,” said Jacquetta. Now it all made sense. “She rented a love nest in your name.”

“Out! Out!”

There was an unbecoming moment of full-body wrestling with Clint the Manager before the stage door slammed behind them.

Chapter 31. Devil’s Elbow

At the library he gave her a stack of dimes and said, “Better make copies of those letters. Lady Susan might repossess them out of sheer revenge.”

“I’ve got my own dimes thank you,” she said, pushing his hand away.
The newspapers – now confined to microfilm operated by a sticky hand crank rotary machine – were bleached of both sense and sensibility.

Photos of Kleinemann and Lundt might as well have been Kabuki masks; one Obvious Old Woman and a pair of gangly dark-haired teenagers, visibly he and she. Jacquetta had better luck with the magazines, showing two pictures; one of a terrifying earth floored basement where tree trunks complete with bark held up the ramshackle house and the other of the “back yard”; a chipped cement court whose single central pole dangled a depressing wire.

The tale was soon told; the old woman tortured Ricey Kleinemann as long as she was able, beating her with a wire and confining her to the basement until the abused was old enough and big enough to become the abuser. She, as Clay Lundt asserted – or Clay, as Ricey always insisted – followed Granma’s script closely, throwing her down the basement stairs, tethering her in the yard and ultimately garroting her with a wire. Whether it was the same wire that had been used on Ricey the story did not say.

Even a town named “Devil’s Elbow” could produce enough jury members with a sneaking suspicion Granny had it coming.

The “perps” – no one bothered to ascribe superior or inferior culpability – were confined till their twenty-sixth birthdays – then Sayonara. There were no stories in any press format about their release three years ago.

“Yuck,” said Jacquetta. “What kind of a name is Ricey? I don’t know if we should even bother to have any of this copied.”

“It was Rise,” said Nelson. “German. All we need to now is whether this is any kind of a secret worth killing for.”

“They did their time,” Jacquetta said.

“But could either of them ever get a position of trust again?”

“Nobody’s the right age.” Jacquetta tried to think how old Penny Dettler was. Hard to tell – she looked thirty in some light and forty in another. “The au pair said both Avalon and her husband are having affairs with younger partners. One of them could be one of our ex-killers.”

“If we knew who they were.”

“Benson might have known. And Chester is rumored to have affairs with people he hires. Benson would have investigated all that.”

“And now he’s dead.”

In fact there were nothing but dead ends in this case, thought Jacquetta. That was obviously the way the murderer liked it.

Chapter 30. The Detective’s Dilemma

“Wow,” said Lt. Marie, sitting down uninvited, “Lawyered up already, huh?”

“Mr. Kyro is my friend,” said Jacquetta stiffly. Luckily Nelson said nothing.

Clearly unbelieving, Lt. Marie produced a paper. “I’d like you to sign this statement that you made this morning, and answer a few more questions about your roommate’s life. What did you know about her job, for example? Did she ever complain to you about it?”

This guy just wasn’t getting it. While correcting typos with one hand, Jacquetta said, “I don’t think this murder had anything to do with my roommate’s job. My roommate was helping me try to find an anonymous letter writer and I think –“

“Oh? Playing amateur detective, eh? You got any of these letters?”

Jacquetta didn’t know whether he meant had she “received” any or was she carrying, but she had started confiding in him so she might as well continue. “The officer who searched my purse already saw these,” she said laying them out on the table, “But-“

Lt. Marie took one look at the blue stationery and the daisies and said, “Nah. Nah.”

“Nah?” Nelson echoed. It was the first word he had spoken.

“That’s clearly a woman’s letter. This is a man’s crime.”

“It is?”

Jacquetta was grateful for Nelson’s intervention because the detective was defensive with him in a way he certainly wasn’t with her.

“Yeah,” said Marie, “It was a sex crime. She was strangled with a dishtowel – you got any idea how much strength that would take?”

“How much?” asked Nelson.

“A lot. Plus there was a broomstick at the scene. Looks like impotent rage to me.”

“Impotent rage?” Jacquetta echoed faintly. She didn’t dare even think what this could possibly mean.

“Date gone wrong. Enough said,” smirked the detective.

“Honey didn’t date anyone but Barney,” insisted Jacquetta.

“Maybe that’s what she told her roommate, the nun. For all you know, she sent those letters.” He swept them up with her statement as he rose to go.

“They weren’t sent to ME,” argued Jacquetta. But Nelson laid a restraining hand along Lt. Marie’s arm.

“You can’t take those, he said.

Lt. Marie regarded him disbelievingly. “You said it was evidence in the case.”

“And you said it wasn’t.” Nelson took them back. “Get a warrant.”

Lt. Marie seemed incensed.

“When are you releasing my car?” asked Jacquetta.

“At the moment we’re all jammed up with a bunch of uncooperative witnesses,” he said, “So I don’t know. Check back later in the day.”

He flounced out.

“I don’t think Lt. Susan is going to be our savior,” sighed Nelson.

“Well, you didn’t treat him very diplomatically,” protested Jacquetta.

“They had no right to search your car.”

“I said they could! There’s nothing in there but trash. I wanted them to get on with the actual evidence.”

Nelson shook the letters at her. “You see how well THAT worked out!”

“I’m certain he’s completely wrong about the case,” said Jacquetta.

“Well, if he’s right about the dishtowel, I guess it has to be a man. Lundt would be what… twenty-nine? Thirty?”

“Maybe Lundt and Kleinemann are still working together.”

“Maybe.” He stood up.

“So where are you going?”

“With you to the state library, looking up that old case, and then we have to hit the Brass Ass.”

She couldn’t believe it. “Don’t you have work?”

He grinned. “I’m bereaved, remember” The grin faded. “I lost everything.”

Chapter 29. Kleinemann-Lundt

They lunched together in the coffee shop. Jacquetta was afraid Nelson would say something more about leaving his wife – thank God he didn’t bring it up. Maybe last night changed his mind – she couldn’t take the time to care. No decisions could possibly be made.

She pulled out the anonymous letters from her bag and going over her notes, he saw the words Kleinemann-Lundt.

“Kleinemann-Lundt!” he exclaimed. “It must mean the crime case – what else could it mean?”

“A crime case? I hope so. I mean, how many Kleinemann-Lundts could there be?” she echoed hopefully.

“Kleinemann was one person and Lundt was the other but I don’t remember who was who. I’ll have to look it up.”

She poured more coffee. “I don’t remember anything about it. Tell me.”

“It was the kind of case I like to follow. Very psychological.” Nelson leaned back in his chair, seemingly better rested and more at peace. “About twelve years back. In upstate New York. A teenage girl and boy killed her grandmother. Actually tortured the old woman to death. There had been a lot of abuse in the family – not that the jury cared. Each kid blamed the other – so the question was, who was really responsible?”

“Well, if it was her grandmother –“

“Yeah, but the boy had a big motive, too. The old lady was preventing them from being together.”
“And each said the other did it?”

“Right. But the jury didn’t buy it and locked them both up. Of course, they were minors so they could be out now.”

“And they repudiated each other?”

“Totally. If you’re familiar with the concept of ‘folie a deux’ – “

She couldn’t avoid a sour grimace. “Some people say that’s what all love is.”

He took her hand – “I hope you’re not one of them.”

“I hope I’m not.” She was feeling helpless in the thrall of circumstance.

“I’m sorry in one way about this morning – and in another way I’m not sorry,” he tentatively suggested.

“I’m not sorry,” she insisted, more decisively than she felt.

“Obviously, I’m happy for me – you know I’m greedy and take all I can get – but I’m worried about you. I don’t want to influence you.”

He stroked her palm. Still influencing her. Though maybe it was unconscious.

“I can’t make decisions,” she told him. “Not till this is over. We have to decide what to tell the police.”

“Why now? Why decide?”

“Because Lt. Marie is over there, and I see he’s looking for me.”

Chapter 28. Nelson

His guarded voice had always betrayed him: it usually meant he wasn’t alone.

“I’m at The Coaching House,” she said. “Room 412.”

“Really?” His voice changed immediately. Panic? Longing? Fear?

“Honey’s been killed.”

It was decisive. He said, “I’ll come immediately.”

All the rooms at the Coaching House looked the same, and like Pasteur’s dogs, she had learned to slaver in every one. Would she again? It was hard for her mind to imagine, but the body doesn’t forget.

She sat on the bed in the nondescript chamber, under a blurry painting of The Four Zoas and tried to think what she would say to the man who had once been her lover. How much could she tell him, when what she told Honey had gotten her friend killed?

He didn’t even know Honey. They had never met, but they cordially loathed each other from a distance while they struggled for the rights to Jacquetta’s soul.

He wore a suit; she should have been expecting that; after all, it was a workday. She preferred him naked; but she shouldn’t allow herself to think about that. She had to let him in at the door; that meant they were close enough to hug. At once her disloyal body woke up, just like a dog, re-playing so many delicious feedings from the master’s hand.

She backed away in disarray, sitting down on the single armchair; why hadn’t she met him in the coffee shop for God’s sake? Why a hotel room? Because she craved privacy to cry, to shriek, tear her hair, throw herself down on the carpet wailing…

He sat on the bed.“What happened?”

She was going to have to tell him. She simply could not do this alone.

“If I tell you, your life’s at risk too,” she said first, knowing he never cared for things like that. The interesting part was watching the disbelief in his eyes give way to a kind of confused sadness; how could even the most outrageous statements be taken for hyperbole when Honey was dead?

“I accept everything,” he said finally, “I thought I told you. Just tell me what happened.”

“Coming back from my last day of work I met an old lady on the train and we fell into conversation. She said she was impressed–“ Jacquetta finally had the grace to blush, “with the whole monastery thing and she wanted to consult me about a problem with an evil person in her life. One of us mentioned the word, “sociopath.”

“Probably you,” he said. Same old Nelson. “Accepting everything” obviously didn’t mean agreeing with her, promoting or even soothing her ego. Jacquetta had ignored this as much as she possibly could in the past and she wasn’t going to make an exception now.

“She invited me to lunch to talk, but before we could meet, she – died.”

He picked up on her intonation. “Murder most foul?”

“Nothing else makes sense. But before she died, she put me in her will and left me six thousand dollars.”

Ironic skepticism – his natural pose – surfaced beneath his patient, listening expression and struggled a moment for dominance. She ignored it.

“She also left me a library of books on stained glass where I think she hid a message – but one of the books was destroyed before I could get to it.”

“No other personal directive?”

She could see how this was going to go; he would play lawyer.

“No. It was Beatrix Rainbeaux – one of the Glasstown founders.”

“So, rich,” he put in. “Powerful.”

“Yes. I met the family at the will reading and they are a nasty bunch.”

“But if she didn’t actually disinherit any of them doesn’t that mean –“
She ignored him.

“I sent –“ This was the hard part and her voice faltered – “I sent Honey to Iridium, the Rainbeaux house, to search for something.”

Now he gasped. “How’d you do that?”

I’m going to cry, thought Jacquetta and if I cry I’ll never get this out. She made a monumental effort. “She was excited about playing detective. She met Avalon Powell –“

“Avalon Powell?”

She wasn’t going to ignore his astonished expression.

“You know her?”

“Well…” she hated watching him equivocate while she had undressed her whole soul; “She’s…everywhere. She’s hard to ignore.”

“How well do you know her?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Not THAT well. I’ve met her,” Nelson admitted. “She…wants publicity. And her husband needs it.”

Well, that was true. So far as it went. Rather than believing or unbelieving she moved on. If she didn’t unburden herself, if she didn’t pass this torch to a healthy runner, she’d go under.

“Honey impersonated a home buyer, and I called Avalon to tie her up so Honey could snoop. She found Miss Rainbeaux’s date book and that told us two things more.”

He poured himself a glass of water. She refused one.

“Apparently the day I met her Miss Rainbeaux was coming back from looking up a D.L. LeRoi in Brooklyn, so I thought I ought to look her up, too.”

“Her?”

There was that lawyer again.

“The landlord told me the room was rented by a pretty brunette who described herself as the secretary of Roxelle Shields.”

“Roxelle Shields!”

“You know her, too?” Jacquetta commented sourly.

“Everyone knows her. Everyone male,” he conceded.

“Well, Honey had heard of her.” The very name was difficult to say. She soldiered on. “I called the bar Shields owned but they wouldn’t let me talk to her and they said she doesn’t have a secretary.”

“We should still pay her a visit,” said Nelson.

Jacquetta relaxed the tiniest bit. At least he was offering to help. He would try to take over of course – that was his nature – but she knew she couldn’t do this alone. It was unsafe, for one thing.

“The apartment was empty. It looked like a love nest to me.”

“What does an empty love nest look like?” He was trying not to smile. Already she was out of love with him.

“Satin sheets? Massage oils?”

“Hardly empty,” he defended himself.

“They were in the trash, along with a box of stationery and a broken anklet with Avalon’s initial. Then I went to Avalon’s Open House and I…took a piece of mail.”

“You stole a piece of mail?”

“I don’t know if it’s stealing when the person is deceased.”

“It is,” he corrected, “But I’ve done worse.”

“Her datebook said she was meeting with a “Benson” every week for months. But there are a lot of Bensons in the world. The letter was a returned one of Miss Rainbeaux’s to a private investigator who turned out to be dead, too.”

That slowed him down! All he could say was, “Wow.”

“Wow. Right. She was sending him an anonymous letter she had obviously received. I’m guessing he asked her to send any more letters on to him.”

“But he died?”

“Shot with his own gun and his office was burned down.”

“Holy cow,” said Nelson, “Do the police know any of this?”

“Thy don’t have it connected up,” said Jacquetta. “They probably don’t know about the letters.”

“So then -?” his face fell. He knew it could only get worse.

“The au pair told me Avalon was having an affair with Neil Dettler, the family lawyer.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. I’d guess there’s a long list of Mrs. Powell’s passions.”

Mrs. Powell’s Passions sounded like a sixties rock band. Jacquetta thought she personally would be surprised to find out Avalon loved anything but lucre, but why bring that up at this point?

“And his wife, Penny Dettler, said she received one of the anonymous letters.”

“So, we don’t know how many people got them.”

“We don’t. And I just got back…just got back today and…” this was a struggle – “Honey was dead.” She wept.

He came to sit beside her. “God, I’m sorry,” he said.

“The apartment as all torn up but – I have the letters. Maybe they got the datebook, I don’t know. The police hustled me out of there.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I don’t know how to tell them anything. They’re looking at Honey’s boyfriend, for God’s sake.”

“I’ll help you,” he said. “We’ll do it together.”

He was taking over, like he took over her body. Right now. But why fight it when she wanted – when she needed him so much? She wanted to be whirled away, outside the reach of her sore brain. She clung to him as to a life raft to prevent her from drowning.

Chapter 27. A Late-Stage Baptism

Jacquetta’s home looked like someone else’s apartment. Things were in the wrong places. The lights didn’t work. Jacquetta stood in the doorway for a moment, stupidly staring. It was dark – the drapes were drawn and there was no light but after a moment Jacquetta could discern shapes. The velvet rocker lay on its side; a broomstick was thrown against the couch, an ironing board had been dumped on the upturned coffee table. It reminded Jacquetta of the extensive fort-building of childhood. Except that under the coffee table, under the ironing board, sprawled a litter of white clothes.

No. Nonononono….Oh God deliver us. She pulled the coffee table off the body.

It was Honey, curled impossibly small as if to escape her attacker through the floor. It hadn’t worked. Hair covered her face. Jacquetta reached for her hand, clenched as small as an opossum’s, roadkill to be shoveled aside by an uncaring universe.

She pulled Honey’s hair away and wished she hadn’t: her roommate’s face was unrecognizably purple, tongue extruding like a plague victim’s. Jacquetta scrabbled her fingers in the ashes of a fallen ashtray and drew a cross on the dead girl’s forehead. “I baptize thee in the name of…who?”

That slowed her down. Unbaptized Honey had already belonged to all that was good in the universe. “In the name of those who thirst after righteousness,” Jacquetta whispered. “In the names of the peacekeepers, and in the names the meek who are heirs of the earth.”

The particular peacekeeper who responded to Jacquetta’s 911 call was a man named Lt. Marie. He wanted to talk about boyfriends.

“Barney Douglas”, said Jacquetta, who honestly answered most questions she was asked. “He works at Douglas Cadillac. But he didn’t do this.”

“Oh really?” Darkly alert ferret eyes fixed hers. “Who did?”

That was the question. What could she tell this man? George Cleese? Avalon Powell? She had nothing.

“He wasn’t the type,” she said shortly.

The quizzical eyes hardened. “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.” He looked past her and through her; if she was going to spout the standard forlorn clichés of the bereaved, suddenly he was not interested. “She put up a good fight,” he acceded.

She put up a good fight. Jacquetta blanched. Somehow that was even more horrible. She lost, thought Jacquetta. Because she was fighting a monster, and she was fighting a monster because of me…

“Did you touch anything?”

“The phone,” said Jacquetta vaguely. “The bag of groceries somewhere is mine.” She honestly couldn’t have said what happened to it. “I painted a cross on her forehead.”

The eyes swiveled once again. “You..?”

“I didn’t know what to do.” She shook her head. “I tried giving her to God. I didn’t know WHAT to do.”

She could see he had a fear of female hysteria. He backed up a little.

“And you were where? Coming from where?”

“Oh.” She tried to focus. “My alibi.”

Lt. Marie smirked unpleasantly. “Yeah. Your alibi.”

“I was at the Monastery of Holy Calvary in Southport at four-thirty. Then I had dinner with my mother in Pinewood. I ended up at the all-night grocery on Route 1 –“

“Anyone see you?”

Would Penny remember? Still, there were the groceries, expensive, frozen bags of them. Realer, somehow than Penny Dettler ever was. Ever could be.

“Mrs. Neil Dettler. I…helped her shop and I escorted her home.”

She could tell by his eyes that he knew there was more to this story. But he’d already heard too many stories – enough stories for a lifetime. How much should he care about this one? Officiously, he made a note.

“May I use the phone?” she asked.

“You may not. Officer Fuente will drive you where you went to go.”

Fuente means fountain, she thought. Hidden springs.

She was dismissed, but they wouldn’t let her take anything. Her purse was searched, her car keys impounded and she was directed not to “leave town.” Now she was just another character in Dragnet, or worse. Unsolved Mysteries. Where did she want to go?

“The Coaching House on Rt 33?” she suggested. She knew it well, unfortunately. Through her ex, Nelson. It was next to a grocery store which she knew from experience contained many of what she and her lover used to consider the “necessities of life.”

She was learning different necessities now. Life itself was the first necessity. Knowledge is the second.

Chapter 26. A Midnight Grocery Run

Sanka and brownies stirred up a passion in Jacquetta for sprouts and bran that was simply irresistible. Luckily there was that all night grocery store out on Route 1.

Usually after Dinner with Mom Jacquetta spent the night on the sofa bed but after an hour’s dressing down she discovered herself to be insufficiently masochistic; yet another disqualifier for sainthood in her mother’s eyes.

But she was out and free. Free, free, free. Even the Datsun cooperated, starting up immediately when she really should have sprung for a new battery. Freedom was so seductive. No job, no boyfriend, no obligations really except those he gave herself. Thanks to Miss Rainbeaux, she didn’t even have the immediate specter of the money running out.

At the moment the long-term plan might be catching a murderer, but the short-term plan was helping Honey by contributing some groceries.

Jacquetta loved supermarkets at this hour. She adored the futuristic lighting making the few daring or sleepless shoppers look like visitors from another planet.

That must have been why she stared so long at the woman with the straggly pony tail without recognizing her. The woman filled her cart with Cornish game hens as bony and breastless as herself, a cart already packed to the brim with frozen food. Alerted by that magnetic sense shared by humanoids she lifted wild, unfocused eyes. It was Penny Dettler.

“Are you following me?” she challenged. This was a very different Penny from the open house attendee, this was a woman who’s rope-end was in full view. Husband said no to the divorce, Jacquetta wondered?

“No,” said Jacquetta and it sounded like a lie even to her own ears. Because in a way she was following Penny Dettler; wasn’t she following all of them, straining to see their private habits, to monitor them especially when they thought themselves alone? With the new table-turning aggression she struggled to master, Jacquetta demanded, “Have you been sending anonymous letters, Mrs. Dettler?”

It was the first thing that jumped into her head – she didn’t really suspect Penny of being D.L. LeRoi, but the response was galvanic. Penny’s eyes filled with tears and her mouth quivered.
“Those cruel, cruel letters!” she gabbled. “They said I couldn’t feed my baby but it wasn’t true – I had so much milk my breasts hurt.”

She rubbed her chest as if to make her point. “It was the doctors’ fault,” she wept, “They didn’t want the baby to get the drugs. Why’s that, if the drugs are harmless? They’re poison, that’s why! They were giving me poison!”

Openly weeping, she staggered toward the exit, abandoning her cart. Jacquetta was forced to trail after her, pushing both carts, and then to use her store card to charge all those groceries.
Some detective I am! She thought angrily. Who else believes the line, “You broke it, you bought it?”

“Mrs. Dettler!” she accosted the weeping woman struggling with a set of car keys, “You forgot your groceries!”

Penny allowed Jacquetta to load the back of her station wagon, while Jacquetta thought grimly about the humor of a minor legatee providing the estate executor with weeks of free food. In what universe did that happen? Oh well, she thought, you know who would understand? Beatrix Rainbeaux!

“Are you going to be all right?” she had to ask, helping Penny disentangle her raincoat from the Volvo door. Wasn’t it lawyers who warned, Never ask a question when you’re afraid of the answer?
But all Penny said was, “I think so.”

And so the accusation Penny made came true, and Jacquetta followed her to her door, thinking, “Some detective I am! Who’s in charge here?”

But once Penny stepped out of her car door Jacquetta drove away. She was NOT going to carry Neil Dettler’s groceries to his door!

But she had a lot to think about as she drove home. She was beginning to get a sense of the “personality” of this case. How likely was it that the anonymous letter writer and the murderer were different people? Not likely at ALL, she considered. It would be understandable to murder an anonymous letter writer who’d stumbled on a dangerous fact but look at who was dead. Only people investigating the letters! So the nasty, hidden personality of the killer was starting to emerge, all too clearly. She was looking for a monster.

Chapter 25. Dinner with Mom

Jacquetta slipped Mother Xavier’s rosary in her pocket, threw the printed tract in her back seat and waited until she was halfway down the drive before she began to shriek and curse out loud. She was out of breath and out of words by the time the Datsun climbed the highway ramp but she was not out of anger.

Just who was she so mad at? Jesus? St. John of the Cross? Mother Xavier and Sister Thekla? The latter two, definitely. Bad cop and good cop! Of course she was angriest at herself for unconsciously revealing the ugly truth; that she just didn’t want to toil the rest of her life at some exhausting job! But she ALSO didn’t want to spend her days wearing ugly clothes! These humiliating truths had never really occurred to her, but now that they had, she saw herself as no different, really, than a star-struck eleven year old who dreams of becoming a Bride of God in a haze of chiffon and orange blossoms.

Damn, damn, damn. The one person she was not angry at was the one person she should absolutely loathe: the murderer. But she didn’t feel that way at all. She was scared, but she was intrigued. It felt more like awe, really. Awe-inspiringly concrete was the force of her own determination: you are not getting away with this. Jacquetta Strike will see to that. It was a challenge and a dare and she was excited by those.

Damn Sister Thekla and that pathetic lump of “Dunkin Donuts” sugar! Could it have been deliberate on their part, rubbing her nose in a future of bad food and awful art?

I don’t have to decide, Jacquetta promised herself. Not yet. But I do have to catch that murderer. It’s more important than ever now.

Once she had driven all the way to the monastery there was no hope of getting out of dinner with Mom. Jacquetta’s heart sank when she saw the fare her mother had provided: candied ham and sweet potatoes. Hypoglycemic, her mother got a big thrill out of watching others eat the foods she was forbidden. Jacquetta would have far preferred the salad her mother was toying with, but she hadn’t been consulted. Oh well. At least it meant there would be gooey, homemade brownies for dessert.

“So how did it go?” her mother asked anxiously.

Jacquetta always assumed a false heartiness around her Mom, a confidence she couldn’t actually feel. She loathed the Kabuki-style roles they somehow were forced into but there never seemed to be any escape.

“They’re giving me a little more time,” she said. “This is delicious!”

Her mother’s anxiety wasn’t in the least quieted.

“What I don’t understand is why you care about these people,” she wailed. “A suicidal woman? A murderer? These are godless humans!”

“I feel like the old lady put some trust in me,” her daughter asserted as calmly as she could manage. “She gave me a duty to discharge.” She didn’t dare mention the problem of the dead detective Benson. Her mother would have a panic attack right here.

“But you’re supposed to be under guidance,” the older woman protested. “You’re just like your father, always telling the experts he knew best!”

“It’s just a week or so,” Jacquetta argued, fiercely peppering a sweet potato to give it some kick.

“This is exactly what happened with your father,” Marguerite prophesied, “He became a spoiled priest!”

“Mom, if he’d stayed at the seminary, you wouldn’t have had a husband and I wouldn’t have been born!” Jacquetta responded without thinking. Because possibly her mother would have preferred that state of affairs.