I took a sip from my glass and smiled at him.
“I’ve only been back in town since yesterday,” I said, trying to sort out the essentials of the information Dennis the jeweler had given to Mike and me. “I haven’t connected with the Rams-dales yet. Have you seen them lately?”
“Which Ramsdale, him or her?”
“Either of them. Or Hilly. Hilly is the same age as my daughter.”
He frowned. “Your daughter goes to Rogers?”
“No,” I said, thinking fast. “As I said, we’ve been up in the Bay Area for a while. You know Hilly?”
“Sure. My son is on the club swim team with her.”
“When did you see her last?”
He was looking at me sideways, thinking about something hard enough to put a crease between his nearly white brows. I took another sip of Coke for something to do.
“How long did you say you’ve been gone?” he asked. “Quite a while.”
“And no one told you about the Ramsdales?”
“No,” I said. “I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of keeping up. Has something happened to Randy?”
“Something’s always happening to Randy,” he chuckled. “You know how he is. Old Ramsdale can be a royal pain in the ass, but to tell you the truth, I kind of miss him. He’s a pushy son of a bitch, but he has a good heart.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. He and Elizabeth split up. It seems to me one day he was here, the next he was gone. If you really want to know the gory details, why don’t you check with information central?”
“Where?”
“Come with me.” He slid off his bar stool and waited for me to follow him.
He took me to a cluster of low sofas arranged around a massive stone fireplace. Two women about my age lounged there, feet up on a free-form granite cocktail table. They were an attractive pair, unaffected, casually dressed, obviously loaded – between them they wore enough rocks to ransom Aladdin. The taller woman, an aristocratic blonde, held a swimsuit-clad toddler sprawled across her lap. The child slept with his mouth open, dried Popsicle streaks staining his chin.
The second woman was her opposite, a small, voluptuous brunette. She was pretty in a romantic mold, dark curls, long lashes, pouty valentine-shaped lips. When she raised her manicured hand to brush a stray strand of hair from her face, I saw flecks of green fire in her brown eyes.
The pair were whispering back and forth as Greg Szal and I approached, sharing a few private nudges; curious rather than catty.
The brunette looked up at Szal through her lashes, and I saw a tremor pass through him. She saw it, too, and milked it a little.
“Greg?” she cooed.
He took a gulp of air and turned to me. “You remember my wife, Regina.”
There was something about the way she looked at me, a wry, smart-aleck appraisal, that made me like Regina Szal immediately. More steel town than steel magnolia. I offered her my hand.
“Maggie MacGowen,” I said.
“Maggie MacGowen,” Regina repeated for the benefit of her friend.
“No.” The woman shook her head. “That isn’t it.”
“Isn’t what?” I asked the blonde.
“Your name. Actually, I suppose, it is your name if you say so. But that isn’t who we decided you are.”
Regina smiled. “We were just trying to remember where we met you. I know it wasn’t PTA. Cynthia suggested John Tracy Clinic volunteers.”
I felt my face grow hot, and I knew I was blushing. There was a time everyone in town – whatever town I might have been working in – knew my face. I left network broadcasting in the mid-eighties, and being recognized on the street is getter more and more rare. Almost the only on-camera work I do anymore is promos for PBS. Even with my expensively edited nose, I feel more comfortable on the back end of the camera. I always have. Still, I am around enough so that now and then people who watch public television recognize me on some level.
I had had this who-are-you conversation and variations on it dozens of times. I did what I always do: I just shrugged my shoulders and smiled innocently.
“I was asking Greg about the Ramsdales,” I said. “He thought you might be able to help me.”
“What about them?” Regina asked.
“For starters, where are they?”
“Why?” Regina seemed skeptical. And smart.
“I want to talk to them about Hillary.”
“Is she in some sort of trouble?”
I nodded. “Big-time trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“She ran away from home,” I said. “I want to know why.”
“Are you a social worker?”
“No,” I said. “I’m a mother.”
“Well, then.” Regina looked up at her husband and batted her eyes again. “Greg, on your way out, please tell Sammy to send over another bottle of Moet. And keep them coming. We have some serious talking to do. I want to hear all about Hilly. But I have a feeling I need to be about half blind first.”
“On my way out?” Greg asked, gazing at her with a hangdog longing. “I just got here.”
She pressed his arm. “I said, this is serious.”
As he sloped away, dejected, I had a feeling Regina had already been served a few by Sammy. She was certainly willing to talk.
I turned my smile on her. “It’s wicked what you do to that man.”
“I know,” she purred. “And after all these years. It’s the ultimate power, you know, to hold a man’s balls in the palm of your hand that way.”
The blonde snorted. I guffawed.
Regina grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me down beside her. “Maggie, meet Cynthia.”
“Hello,” I said.
“Nice to meet you.” Cynthia sounded as highbrow as she looked, very long vowels, very Vassar. The grubby child on her lap didn’t quite suit the stereotype. But he suited her. “What nature of trouble is Hillary in?”
I took out the stills of Pisces again, and silently asking the girl for forgiveness, handed them to Regina. This wasn’t the same as showing them to Leslie Metrano. Hillary would have been mortified if either of these women had seen her on the street.
Regina held the prints so that Cynthia could look on and leafed through them twice.
“Do you know this girl?” I asked.
“It’s Hillary Ramsdale.” Regina grimaced. “Do they dress this badly on the Continent, or were these taken on Halloween? She looks like a little whore.”
“That was her intention,” I said. “I filmed her in Los Angeles just a few days ago.”
“Ah-ha.” Cynthia raised a slender hand. “Now I have it. Maggie MacGowen. Aged and Alone. We showed your film at a Junior League seminar about the sandwich generation. You know, adults raising children and caring for elderly parents at the same time. You remember, Regina.”
Regina still seemed confused. She held up one of the pictures. “Hilly was in makeup for a film?”
“No,” I said. “That’s how I found her. Hillary was a working girl.”
The frozen horror on Regina’s face melted to mortified tears as she leafed again through the stills. She turned the stack facedown on the table before she wiped her nose on the sleeve of her sweater. The valentine poutiness was gone from the gaze she turned on me.
“You said ‘was,’ ” she said.
“Hillary is dead.”
“An accident?”
“No. She was murdered.”
“No.” Cynthia drew the sleeping toddler tight and buried her face against him. Regina reached out and grasped the child’s hand. The gesture was very tender, but the green in her eyes sparked with her wrath. It was the right reaction. It showed genuine concern. I liked her even more. Why hadn’t Hillary turned to people like these when she was in trouble?
Sammy came over with champagne and tall flutes and began pouring. Glasses were passed from hand to hand in just the way Kool-Aid was being passed among a group of youngsters down at the pool. As long as Sammy was present, no one said a word.