“Maybe,” I said. “Could be. You never know.”
According to the obituary, services for Ms. Rosejoy Precious will be held at Saint Mary’s by the Lake Church at two P.M., followed by interment at Blessed Angels Memorial Gardens. Well, well, they made the connection sooner than I expected... well, well. It would be fun to attend her funeral. I suppose I’ll find the Winged Angel sitting in the front pew...
Ms. Precious’s mother was, in George’s words, a dish. Fiona Precious was indeed most attractive, a slender lady with a fine-boned face and a cascade of silky blonde hair. Of course, we weren’t seeing her at her best; she’d been crying, and her nose was red and the almost platinum hair disarrayed.
The first thing she said to us was, “Jeffrey. Jeffrey Wilson. I tried to tell her...” And she began to tear up again.
“Now, now, Fiona.” The fairhaired young man sitting next to her in the front pew pawed at her shoulder and proffered a fresh tissue. I dubbed him Cornell Eps, Fiona’s past and probably reinstated in-time-of-stress liaison. He looked, I thought, like a cruder version of the film heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio. George thought he looked more like Johnny Depp.
“What about Jeffrey Wilson?” I wanted to know. People were filing in and my questions came at the wrong time in the wrong place, but in my business you take what you can get.
“I never knew what she saw in that man,” said Fiona through a handful of tissue. “He struck her, you know. She said it was an accident, but I said if they do it once they’ll do it again.”
“Where can we find this Jeffrey Wilson?”
She took the tissue away from her eyes and scowled. “The nerve! Look, Cornell, he’s come to the funeral. There he is, officer, just coming in the door. That’s Jeffrey Wilson.”
“Now that one,” murmured George, “is a piece of work.”
Jeffrey Wilson had a shining head, completely bald, shaven I guessed, there wasn’t a blemish on it. He wore a suit with vest; the color was navy verging on purple. His eyes were striking, an unusual shade of blue, almost lilac. He used them now to case the mourners. They flicked past George and me, and I had the idea that he tagged us right off. He had someone with him, a leggy young woman wearing black tights and a knee-length, black V-necked top. They came tentatively into the church and found seats at the rear. She whispered something, he nodded. Fenster came in then, noted the couple and came on by. “Guess we didn’t do a good extermination,” he said softly, nodding at Eps and Mrs. Precious.
I wanted to ask him about the Wilson character, but we couldn’t talk now. The preacher, minister, whatever — the sign outside identified him as Pastor J. J. Favorsham — appeared in the pulpit. George groaned. He’d often said how he hated funerals; he’d shut his ears and think of bowling consecutive strikes until he had a perfect game, that was his formula for funeral survival. I had no such fantasy to fall back on, so I listened and watched. I hoped the reverend was for tearjerkers. I’d found you could sometimes learn a lot from people’s reactions to heartrending phrases. But all I came up with was that Fiona took her daughter’s death hard.
When the ceremony was over and the casket had been wheeled down the aisle, funeral attendants walked the mother and her friend out before we were permitted to follow. By the time we got outside, the Wilson man had disappeared. The grieving mother and her escort got into the car behind the hearse; the other funeral attendees made their way to their cars. Among their ranks I noted the Restons, but most of the people were strangers to me.
When the cemetery procession began, George and I pulled away, headed for Fiona Precious’s residence. We needed to talk to her and to look over Rosejoy’s possessions, so we went to wait. A lousy time to show up among the funeral guests, but as I said to George, “ ‘Art is long, and Time is fleeting, and our hearts, though stout and brave, still, like muffled drums, are beating funeral marches to the grave.’ ” In response to his incredulous look I added, “That’s Longfellow. I can quote with the best of them.”
“Huh!” said George. “So can I. ‘Once there was an elephant who tried to use the telephant— No! No! I mean an elephone who tried to use the telephone.’ ”
“George,” I said truthfully, “at times you amaze me. Who said that?”
He looked smug. “My mother.”
Fiona was face-deep in tissues when they arrived. I took it that the actual interment had been especially hard on her.
We followed them up to the house. Eps, who was propping her up, three women I didn’t know, and the Reverend Favorsham were murmuring soothing words as they went in. The reverend almost shut the door on us, and when I politely pushed my way in, he looked as though he wished he had.
“Not now,” he said. “No interviews now.”
I showed him my I.D., and he backed off with a scowl. “I hardly think this is the time...”
“There is never a time,” I told him.
“It’s all right,” Fiona Precious interceded for us. “They’re trying to find out who—”
“To quote the Good Book, there is no rest for the weary,” intoned Cornell Eps with a pious glare.
“I think that’s no rest for the wicked,” said George with a smirk.
Actually, it’s no peace for the wicked. “We would like to see your daughter’s room, Mrs. Precious. If you’d accompany us?”
Rosejoy’s room was a little girl’s room: canopied bed, ruffled curtains, and all. I suspected it had been that way since her childhood, never changed even after she’d left the nest. Her clothes hung in perfect alignment in the model closet, her shoes in shoe-rack pockets, her handbags and belts on hooks. “I’d guess you never had a messy-room problem with this one,” I said over my shoulder.
“Rosejoy was a perfectionist,” her mother told me. Her eyes were sea-colored, like opal.
“Wasn’t that occasionally inconvenient?”
She didn’t waver, and for once her eyes were dry. “Sometimes,” amended that to, “not really. Perfectionists can be demanding, but Rosejoy was an angelic child. One year she was poster girl for the United Way. See, there’s a copy behind her bed. The canopy kind of hides it, but you can see Rosejoy was the very picture of a little princess.” She broke down once more. “Oh my beautiful child! How could this happen? You must bring her killer to justice!”
“We’ll do our best.” George’s expression was a mixture of grown man embarrassment and little boy sincerity. I went on with my look-see.
Rosejoy had a French provincial desk, all gold and white. It held stationery and stamps in a brass holder and a set of pens in a porcelain hold-all, a bill from Dillard’s for twenty-eight ninety-nine, and a receipt for gas from a Texaco station. I said, “Her car? Is it here?”
“Yes.” With one final sniff Fiona recovered her composure. “It’s the dark blue Toyota in the garage. Next to my Dodge. Wherever she went that last day, she didn’t drive. Someone must have picked her up.” She settled herself in the chair that faced the desk, began to open drawers. “I really don’t know what she kept in here. I never spied on my daughter.” She glanced up. “I trusted her completely.”
“Nobody saw her leave? When did you see her last? Where were you?”
“The day — the afternoon of the day — it happened, she came home from work, said she was going out and she had to change. I asked her where, but she didn’t answer; I guess she didn’t hear me. I was going out myself. I was due at my bridge club, so I left without speaking to her again.” She sighed deeply, more tears formed. “I don’t think I’ll ever play bridge again.”
I put my question again. “Did anyone see her leave? One of your neighbors? Anybody?”
Head down, she said, “No one. We have only two sets of immediate neighbors, and they’re in and out, work and play and all that. They’re what the papers call yuppies. I couldn’t find anyone who saw her. The other policeman, a lieutenant?, didn’t have any luck either. It was almost like she was invisible.”