Twice while Katie and I were in line at the movies we'd run into her and her dates. She went in for the boyish types who weren't so much boyish as they were boys. I thought that if anybody I'd seen at the funeral might have actually known Teddy, it would be Daphne.
She swung by my table carrying a pot of coffee, and though she caught my eye she drifted away quickly, unsure of how to react. My skills at covert operations needed to be improved upon. I'd left my sunglasses at home.
I beat the lunch rush by a half hour and the place was nearly empty. She spotted me again as I sat staring in her direction and a ripple of tension moved through her face. I smiled and turned up the wattage of my natural charm. She ducked her head and hurried back into the kitchen. I tried hard to recover from the blow to my ego.
It took a few minutes before she came back out. She didn't have any choice but to eventually come over. "Jonny, hi.”
“Hi, Daphne."
She didn't need a pen and a pad to take my order, and just kept smiling widely as annoyance continued to slip in and out of her eyes. The muscles in her sleek neck bunched. In a fair fight she'd probably kill me. "What can I get you?"
I glanced down at the menu. It all looked about the same so I just pointed toward the middle, hoping she wouldn't bring me the purple stuff. Her smile down-shifted into a grin and she sort of bopped her head to the side so that her hair did a wheeling twist in the air. It was a gesture that might have been cute when she was fifteen. She nabbed the menu from my hand. "Coming right up."
When she returned I was thankful to see nothing purple on the plate. There was also nothing edible. "Can I talk to you for a minute, Daphne?"
She tilted her head again and her hair swept back in the other direction. "Can't, Jonny, the boss might see me."
"You've been working here for twelve years, Daphne. You think Harvey is going to fire you anytime soon?"
"I don't like the way you said that," she told me, and two thin bands of red spread in straight lines across her cheeks.
"I'm sorry."
"What do you want?"
"To talk about Teddy Harms."
"Teddy?" She drew her chin back and frowned.
"Yes."
"I didn't even know him."
"Why were you at his funeral then?"
Now the real heat came up, and I heard something crack in her, maybe her knees as she grew rigid. Even the unicorns looked pissed off. "And what the hell business is it of yours?"
"Listen, I…"
"Why, do you think I killed him?"
"No, of course not."
"I'm a suspect? Funny, I don't remember you ever wearing a badge, Jonny. Exactly when was it again that you became a cop?"
I was beginning to have serious concerns about my abilities to glean useful information by merely smiling. So far, I'd done nothing but rile her into throwing up a defensive wall. Her hair wagged back to the other side again. Time for a new tack. "You didn't know Teddy?"
"I just said that. I never met him."
"But Theodore Harnes?"
"None of your business." Her arms crossed and appeared strong enough to break two-by-fours. "You like to think you're smooth, don't you?"
"Uhmm, no, actually."
"Slipping back into town, nosing around until you find something ugly you can yank out and hold up for all the cameras and newspapers, right? That's your action? Funny thing is, didn't you ever think that some people might think you're a suspect? The way you're always in trouble? Watch where you point that finger, Jonny, because there are plenty of folks around who are pointing one right back at you."
The lunch crowd began to pile up, doorway filling, the hostess seating more customers and bouncing more menus. I'd lose Daphne in another minute.
"The young woman at the funeral who was crying. Do you know her?"
"Her name is Alice Conway, lives out on High Ridge. Her father was a competitor of Harnes' in some local merchandising business, I don't know what. Her old man got driven out pretty quick, lost everything. Her parents are dead. Now leave me alone, and when you see her, give the little bitch my regards."
She caught herself at the last moment and realized she'd said more than she'd cared to say, but really didn't care that much. A nasty smile nicked the edge of her mouth as she stared at me.
I thought I'd better turn off the goddamn charm, and I got the hell out of there.
High Ridge seemed draped against the foothills overlooking the country, falling back one level upon the next farther and higher into the hillside: huge homes sparsely dappled the entire area, some huddled together and others keeping their distance like squatting, cagey brutes.
The houses all appeared to be at least a century old, and I saw several Historical Society preservation plaques inlaid along the sides of boulders. Wrought-iron signs standing beside stone lions kept proclaiming which great people had done what great things in bygone eras. A statue of a revolutionary war hero stood on an empty bluff looking lonely and very confused. I knew just how he felt.
I still didn't have a car in Felicity Grove, and all three of Duke Edelman's station trucks were up on skids, so I kept borrowing Anna's van. The hand controls were as familiar to me as using foot pedals, almost more so considering I drove her van more than I drove a standard. I hadn't owned a car in the six years since I'd moved to Manhattan. I had a CD of Pachelbel's "Canon and Other Baroque Favorites" playing, and the winsome classical music didn't match the approaching vista as I made a sharp turn onto a private road.
Alice Conway's house brooded behind a thick line of oak and hickory, dark except for one foreboding yellow light that shone gloomily through the shadows of abundant trees. The driveway had chipped and rutted in several spots, and last autumn's rotted leaves lay strewn against the porch. Rain gutters on the east side of the house had torn loose and hung askew, bouncing against the split wooden shingles in the breeze.
I stepped up the porch and the stairs wobbled and creaked under me. I waited for a black cat to leap at my face or an unkindness of ravens to burst from the attic window. A '68 Mustang that looked like it had scraped every highway divider from here to the Holland Tunnel sat at an angle facing the house. Behind it, nearly kissing the bumper, was a GTO that somebody had spent a couple hundred hours restoring to mint condition.
I rang the doorbell and then knocked loudly. It seemed like the kind of house where people might quite often say, "I didn't hear a thing." I waited a minute and repeated the process. And then again. No cats crept along the porch rafters.
The young lady who'd wailed at the funeral finally answered the door. Only one side of her face was visible as she peered through the crack at me. We both looked at each other for a little while. Slowly she opened the door wider, exposing more of her face. She was eighteen or nineteen, with large, pink lips made for pouting that nearly drew complete attention from the deep brown circles under her eyes. A rowdy group of curls hung into the corners of her mouth. Her nerves were clearly shot, and when she said "Yes?" her voice squeaked curiously, hauling the word out and snapping it in half.
I saw the outline of a man next to her behind the door and I dipped forward to get a better look. She jerked back and the young man who'd been comforting her during Teddy Harnes' service came into view. She said "Yes?" again and kept it to one syllable this time, the curls edging in and out of her mouth. We watched one another some more, and I understood that the depth of her sorrow was real and I suddenly felt very sorry for her.