The Texans turned out to be good for a lot of jewelry, which was typical. One of the women, however, had better-than-average taste, and she gravitated toward an antique retablo of the Virgen de Guadalupe. Miriam, seeing her interest, moved in for the kill, telling the story of the beloved figure, how a cape full of rose petals burned itself into the cloak that a peasant brought to the cardinal.
“Oh, it’s darling,” the woman trilled. “Just darling. How much?”
“You sure can sling the shit,” Joe said, coming out as the quartet left, accompanied by Javier’s effusive good wishes.
“Thanks,” Miriam said, sniffing at the burst of breeze that entered the shop in the Texans’ wake. “Do you…is there a strange smell in here this morning?”
“Just the usual mustiness that we get in this chilly weather. Why, what do you think you smell?”
“I don’t know. Something like…wet dog.”
Not in the bedroom , Sunny would report. Not in the basement. Not under the lilac bush. Not on the porch. There are, of course, an infinite number of places where one is not, yet only one place where one actually is. Miriam liked to think that Fitz, at least, had found his way to the girls, and stayed with them all these years, a loyal guardian.
As for Bud, Heather’s hapless blanket, reduced to a small square-it was here in Mexico with Miriam, a faded scrap of blue cloth, preserved in a frame that she kept on her nightstand. No one ever asked her about it. If they had, she would have lied.
CHAPTER 13
Infante’s momentum, so strong all day, faltered at the driveway to Edenwald. Nursing homes-and whatever they called these places, retirement communities or assisted living, they were still nursing homes-were creepy to him. Instead of making a right into Edenwald’s parking lot, he found himself going left into the mall, toward TGI Friday’s. It was going on 1:00 P.M., and he was hungry. He had a right to be hungry at 1:00 P.M. He hadn’t been in a Friday’s for a few years, but the staff still wore those striped referee tops, which he had never quite gotten. A ref-timekeeper, custodian of the rules-didn’t convey fun to him.
The menu was also full of mixed messages, pushing plates of cheesy things and fried things, then including the breakdown of net carbs and trans fats in other items. His old partner had analyzed every bite this way, depending on which diet she was trying. By calorie, by carb, by fat, and, always, by virtue. “I’m being good,” Nancy would say. “I’m being bad.” It was the only thing he didn’t miss about pairing with her, the endless dissection of what she put in her mouth. Infante had once told Nancy that she didn’t know what bad was if she thought it was something found in a doughnut.
Thinking of which-he smiled at the waitress, not his, but one at a nearby table. It was a defensive smile, an in-case-I-know-you smile because she looked a little familiar, with that high-on-the-head ponytail. She flashed him an automatic grin but didn’t make eye contact. So she wasn’t someone he knew. Or-this had never occurred to him before-maybe she had forgotten him.
He paid his bill and decided to leave his car where it was, cutting across Fairmount Avenue to Edenwald. What was it about the air in these places? Whether super-posh, like this one, or just a step up from a county hospital, they all smelled and felt the same: overheated and cold at the same time, stuffy, room deodorizers and aerosols battling the medicinal air. Death’s waiting room. And the more they fought it, like this place with all its brightly colored flyers around the lobby-museum trip, opera trip, New York trip-the more obvious it seemed. Infante’s father had spent his last years in a nursing home on Long Island, a no-frills place that all but announced “You’re here to die, please hurry up.” There was something to be said for the honesty of its approach. But if you could afford a place like this, of course you’d ante up for it. At least it cut down on a family’s guilt.
He stopped at the front desk, where he could tell that the women were checking him out, wondering if he was going to be a regular. He inspected them back but didn’t see anything of note.
“Mr. Willoughby is home,” the receptionist said.
Of course , Infante thought. Where else would he be? What else did he have to do?
“CALL ME CHET,” said the man in the brown cardigan, which looked expensive, maybe cashmere. Infante had been gearing up to meet someone feeble and ancient, so this trim, well-dressed man was a bit of a shock. Willoughby was probably this side of seventy, not much older than Lenhardt and considerably healthier-looking. Hell, in some ways he looked healthier than Infante.
“Thanks for seeing me with no notice.”
“You got lucky,” he said. “I usually play golf over at Elkridge on Thursday afternoons, but this last gasp of winter forced us to cancel. Do I detect some New York in your voice?”
“Some. They beat most of it out of me in the twelve years I’ve lived here. Ten more years and I’ll be saying ‘warter’ and ‘zinc.’”
“Of course the so-called Bawlmer accent is a working-class accent. It hews very close to Cockney. There are families who go back four hundred years in Baltimore, and I can assure you they don’t speak that way.”
On the surface it was an asshole thing to say, a clever way of saying My family is old and rich, just in case the casual mention of Elkridge Country Club hadn’t done the trick. Infante wondered if the guy had been like that as a detective, trying to have it both ways. A cop, but a cop who never let his coworkers forget that he didn’t have to be one.
If so, he must have been hated.
Willoughby settled into an armchair, his regular seat judging by the sweat line where his close-trimmed hair ended. Infante perched on the sofa, clearly a woman’s purchase-rose-colored and uncomfortable as hell. Yet Infante had known the moment he crossed the threshold that it had been some time since a woman lived there. The apartment was neat and well kept, but there was a palpable absence. Of sound, of smells. And then there were the little things, like that grease line on the easy chair. He knew the feeling from his own place. You could always tell whether a woman was a regular on the premises.
“According to the records, you’ve got the Bethany case file. I was hoping I could pick it up.”
“I have the…” Willoughby seemed confused. Infante hoped he wasn’t edging into senility. He looked great, but maybe that’s why he had moved into Edenwald so young. But the brown eyes quickly turned shrewd. “Has there been a development?”
Infante had anticipated this question and prepared for it. “Probably not. But we’ve got a woman in St. Agnes.”
“Claiming to know something?”
“Yeah.”
“Claiming to be someone?”
Infante’s instinct was to lie. The fewer people in the loop, the better. How could he trust that this guy wouldn’t spread the news all over Edenwald, using it as a chance to relive his own glory days? Then again Willoughby had been the original primary. No matter how good the file was, he might have valuable insights.
“This doesn’t leave the room-”
“Of course.” Promised quickly, with a brisk nod.
“She says she’s the younger one.”
“Heather.”
“Right.”
“And does she say where she’s been, what she’s been up to, what happened to her sister?”
“She’s not saying much of anything anymore. She asked for a lawyer, and now they’re both stonewalling us. The thing is, when she started slinging this shit yesterday, she thought she was in a lot of trouble. She was in an accident on the Beltway-serious injuries, but probably nofault-and fled the scene. She was found walking on the shoulder of I-70, where it dead-ends into the park-and-ride.”