She hesitated. “I. . Christ. . Kitty.”
Joyce Novick had gone even paler, if that was possible, as if a ghost had just knocked on her door. Maybe it had, Louis thought.
“I’m working,” Joyce Novick said finally, gesturing weakly behind her.
“I’d appreciate it if you could take a few minutes,” Louis said.
Joyce wavered. It was obvious she didn’t want to talk.
“Please, Mrs. Novick. I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important.”
She hesitated, then nodded. She opened the door wider so Louis could come in. “I have to finish up,” she said. “Do you mind waiting?”
“No problem.”
Louis followed her through a small living room decorated in the country style that mandated plaid sofas, stuffed roosters and the cloying smell of cinnamon potpourri. In the tiny kitchen, two boys were sitting at the table, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The smaller one’s face was tear-streaked; he must have been the one screaming. They eyed Louis as he followed Joyce out a door and into the garage.
Off in one corner was a teenage girl, sitting in a swivel chair in front of a big mirror. Her body was covered with a green smock and she had big rollers in her hair.
Joyce Novick saw Louis staring at her. “I do hair,” she said.
The makeshift beauty salon was stuffed in one corner of the dark garage. An old a/c wall unit wheezed away above the mirror, trying to defuse the garage’s odor of mildew and car oil.
Joyce Novick moved in behind the girl and picked up a brush and a big pink foam roller. “How did you find me?” she asked cautiously.
“Ray Faulk told me about you,” he said.
“Ray. . I haven’t thought about him in years,” she said softly, winding a strand of hair.
“It took me a while to track down your address.”
Joyce smiled wryly. “Immokalee isn’t exactly the center of the universe.”
“You moved out here after high school?” Louis asked.
She shook her head. “I dropped out before senior year. Moved out here right after I got married. My husband Stan’s a foreman over at one of the cooperatives.”
Louis looked into the mirror and caught the eyes of the girl in the chair. She was looking between Louis and Joyce, trying to figure out what he was doing here.
“Time for the dryer, Rachel,” Joyce said.
The girl let Joyce deposit her under the dryer, wedged next to a tool bench. It was only when Joyce was sure the girl couldn’t hear anything that she turned back to Louis.
“I’m sorry I acted so weird at the door,” Joyce said. “I thought you were here about my oldest kid, Sean. He’s eighteen and been in some trouble. I haven’t heard from him in a while.”
“Can we talk about Kitty?” Louis asked.
She began to pile the pink rollers back in a box. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything you can remember.”
Joyce nodded. “I used to think about her all the time, even though I didn’t want to. Then the years went by and it got easier to forget.”
“I’m sorry I have to bring it all back.”
She looked at him. “Oh, it wasn’t just you. It was that man, seeing him on TV after all this time.”
She was talking about Jack Cade, but Louis knew she didn’t want to say his name. He slipped a notebook out of his pocket. “I just have a few questions, Mrs. Novick. What can you tell me about the night Kitty disappeared?”
She sat down in the swivel chair, holding a hairbrush. “God, I can still remember that night like it was yesterday.”
Joyce’s pale blue eyes grew distant. “It was April 9th. And it was hot and sticky, like summer was coming early that year. All the kids were out cruising. We were very busy, I remember.”
“Do you recall anything out of the ordinary?”
Joyce shook her head. “Kitty punched out at eleven, just like always. I waved to her as she walked toward the bus stop. She turned and waved back. That’s the last time I saw her.”
“She didn’t leave with anyone?”
Joyce shook her head slowly.
Louis pulled up a stool and sat down opposite the swivel chair. “How long did you know Kitty?” he asked.
Joyce was staring at something on the opposite wall. Louis followed her gaze, but all he saw was a bunch of tools hanging on a pegboard.
“Mrs. Novick?”
She looked back at him.
“How long did you know Kitty?”
“We met in sixth grade. I remember the first time I saw her.” For the first time, Joyce smiled. It transformed her, made her look younger. “Kitty was in the girl’s john ratting her hair and making spit curls. I was in awe of her. None of the other girls ratted their hair in sixth grade.”
“That’s when you became friends?” Louis prodded.
“Yeah, I lived a couple doors down so we walked to school together, slept over at each other’s houses. We were like sisters.”
She smiled as another memory came to her. “When we were thirteen, Kitty came up with this big plan to run away to London, because she was in love with Paul McCartney and I was in love with George. But she decided she couldn’t leave her father. We used to talk with English accents and make up false identities. Kitty wanted to be called Lady Kitrina Jaspers. I was Lady Joy Heartsfield. Joy. . Kitty came up with that for me.”
Joyce’s smile lingered; she was still lost in the past. Louis waited, not wanting to interrupt.
“What was Kitty like?” Louis asked finally.
Joyce blinked, coming back. “Like? Oh, geez, she. .” She shook her head, like she didn’t know how to answer.
“She loved to swim, especially at night,” Joyce said. “Once, when we were in eighth grade, she made me sneak out of the house and we rode our bikes over to the municipal pool. It was closed, but Kitty just climbed the fence. I was so scared we’d get caught. But Kitty wasn’t. I can still see her laughing and jumping off the high-dive board.”
Louis had a vision of the two girls giggling in the moonlit water.
“Kitty wasn’t afraid of anything,” Joyce went on. “But I was. That night at the pool, I was afraid to jump off the high board so I kind of scooted down and hung from it. I was hanging there, scared stiff and she was yelling up at me, saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, Joyce, just let go!’ ”
Joyce fell silent. The only sound was the wheeze of the air conditioner and the steady hum of the hair dryer.
“I never figured out what she saw in me,” she said. “She was so pretty and I was, well, I was kinda plain and a little chubby.” Joyce blushed slightly. “I figured I could just get her rejects.”
“Her father told me Kitty didn’t date.”
“That’s right,” Joyce said, nodding. “I haven’t seen Mr. Jagger since-” She hesitated. “I was going to say since the funeral, but he didn’t come. He spent a fortune on the coffin, mahogany with these beautiful brass handles. But then he was so upset, he couldn’t even come to see her.”
She looked at Louis. “How is he doing?”
Louis thought a moment before he answered. “Still confused.”
Joyce nodded slowly. “I should go see him. I always meant to afterward, but I got pregnant with Sean and we moved out here. Twenty years. . goes by before you know it.”
Louis thought of Mobley’s words about the greasers, the “wild crowd” girls: They got pregnant.
Joyce glanced over at the girl under the dryer. “Excuse me a moment.” She went over, checked the dryer and came back.
Louis wasn’t sure how to phrase the question that was in his head. “Ray told me boys tried to come on to Kitty all the time. You never saw her go with anyone?”
“Ray would drive her home once in a while, but she never went with anyone else.”
“Was there any boy who was more aggressive than others?”
Joyce frowned. “Well, they all flirted with her, especially the football players. They’d cruise in after a game in their cool cars, all puffed up with themselves. Lonnie Albertson, Jeff, Tony Cipolli, Lance. .”
“Lance Mobley?” Louis asked. “Did Mobley come on to her?”
“Lance came on to to anything that breathed, even me once. I think he thought we were easy, you know, because we were from Edgewood.” Joyce’s eyes grew distant. “Lance Mobley. . he was a good-looking boy. He’s sheriff now, isn’t he? I guess he did all right for himself.”