The Dangerous Edge of Things

CHAPTER 22

The press conference was everything I expected it to be. Landon started with a little speech about Phoenix. Then the Beaumonts took the podium, explaining their reasons for offering the reward, for standing up for one of their own. Janie stood silent through it all, hidden behind the principals, clutching at her cross.

Mark Beaumont brought the proceedings to a close. “It comes down to what we do for each other. Eliza mattered, and I’m here, with these fine women and men, to make sure that she keeps on mattering.”

Not especially profound, but the applause rose rich and thick around Mark as the nucleus, the center of the spin. One of the reporters—this rangy disreputable-looking kid—moved forward and fired off shot after shot just as Charley took Mark’s hand. She looked nervous in the staccato bursts of light, and I wasn’t surprised when one of the security guards took the guy firmly by the elbow. He fought it briefly, flashing a nasty grin toward the stage, and then allowed himself to be led away, still popping off shots with one hand.

When it was over, Landon and Trey escorted the Beaumonts back to their offices. I was about to follow when I felt a hand at my elbow.

It was Janie. “Get me out of here before I blow and start using the f-word,” she said.

***

We went across the street to a wine and chocolate shop that also sold coffee—she sucked down a cigarette on the walk over. I resisted the urge. But I did get two cappuccinos and a gigantic chocolate muffin before joining Janie on the patio. By then, her hands weren’t shaking quite so badly, and she’d stopped fidgeting.

She took the top off her cup. “Thank you. That was starting to get to me.” She stirred her foam with her finger. “I mean, I’m really grateful to the Beaumonts for everything they’re doing. But I just want to get Eliza and go home.”

The sidewalk teemed with people lured outside by the clear undiluted sunshine. But the bright air carried an unexpected bite, especially in this part of downtown, shot through with crosscurrent breezes that ambushed you at every corner. The tourists huddled under the Fox marquee with their Starbucks and street maps. The dog walkers kept their arms folded and practically dragged their Chihuahuas and terriers down the sidewalk.

I offered Janie some muffin. She shook her head. She was still pretty, and I could see the high school girl she must have been once, before she had to grow up and be responsible for everyone around her.

“They told me we could have an open casket. Mama will be relieved.” She said it emotionlessly. “Do you have any news?”

“Maybe.” I thought about the intake report Rico had delivered to me, the one he’d marked for my eyes only. He’d found it filed away at a data collection service when it was supposed to have been expunged, something he said happened all the time. “Did you know William Perkins—I mean, Bulldog—when you were in high school?”

“No, not really.”

“Do you remember if he ever went away for a while?”

She frowned. “Went away? You mean like moved?”

“I mean like juvenile hall.”

She licked the milky coffee from her finger. “Like I said, I didn’t know him that well.”

I pulled out the file Rico had sent me. “I’ve got some information that says he spent six months in a juvenile correctional facility. Of course, he went on to get a grown-up rap for some petty robbery, possession, meth especially. On probation now.”

“So?”

“So it’s the juvie charge that’s got my interest.” I tapped the papers. “Breaking and entering. The report mentions two people committing the crimes, one of them a girl. She’d be lookout while he ransacked the place. She fled the scene when the cops arrived, though, and Bulldog never spilled her name.”

She stared at the report like it was a snake, or a bear trap, something unpredictable and dangerous. In the lot beside us, the stop-go drone of jackhammers intensified into a cacophony.

“How did you get this?” she said.

“Does it matter?”

She lowered her voice. “Do the cops know?”

“They can’t. It’s sealed.”

“So how did you get it?”

“Like I said, it doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does! If the cops see this, they’ll think she was going to rob your brother’s house.”

“Maybe she was. Doesn’t mean she deserved what happened to her.”

Janie glowered, like she wanted to argue.

“Just tell me,” I said. “Is it true?”

She sat there for a second, then exhaled. “Yeah, it’s true. She always felt like she owed him for that one, and he made sure she kept feeling that way.” Janie shoved the papers back at me. “He did it, didn’t he? He killed her.”

“I don’t know.”

“I told her to stay away, but she wouldn’t listen. He kept telling Eliza he was a better man when he was with her, and she believed that. She liked that.”

Don’t we all? I thought.

“But she mainly kept him around for the drugs, you know? She said she was kicking the stuff, and I believed her…but then I found out otherwise.” She looked me right in the eye, and I saw effort behind it. “They found drugs at her apartment, some meth, some pot. The manager at her place told the cops he’d been suspicious, but that he hadn’t wanted to say anything.”

“You mean Jake Whitaker?”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember his name.”

Suddenly, I was thinking about Whitaker, how he’d lied when he said Eliza was well-liked. And I remembered something else that had been bothering me.

“This may sound off the subject, but how well did Eliza know Mark Beaumont?”

“She’d met him at one of the staff events, said he was real nice. He even sent her this Christmas card one time.”

“So they were close?”

Janie looked at me like I was a little cracked. “He’s Mark Beaumont. She’s a receptionist. Everybody got Christmas cards.”

“But he’s doing all this—”

“Yeah, well, I appreciate it, I really do.” She unfolded her napkin, wiped her mouth, folded it again. “But it’s not really about Eliza, you know?”

Yeah, I knew. The construction noise across the street abruptly ceased, and a startling silence fell. It was disconcerting, like being in the middle of a party when suddenly the only voice you can hear is your own. A mockingbird trilled from the shrub beside me. I guessed it had been singing all along.

Janie didn’t speak. It wasn’t until I reached for my bag that she said, “There’s something else.”

I waited. She stared at her napkin. “I went to the bank to clear out her account. Mama thought we could use it for the funeral. Anyway, Eliza had been getting money, a lot of money.”

“How much?”

“A thousand here, more or less there.”

“For how long?”

“Ever since she moved here, six months or so. The police found a shoebox full of cash on the top shelf of her closet.” Janie cast her eyes sideways, like she was afraid of being overheard. “I know what that looks like, all that money. I know what the police are thinking, especially since she got hooked up with Bulldog again.”

“Was she involved with any other shady people?”

“You mean like that stripper friend of hers?”

“What stripper friend?”

“I don’t know, Bambi, Tricksie, something like that.”

A stripper. I remembered the other thing Rico had discovered—that my mysterious caller had called me from a pay phone right in front of a strip club.

Janie’s eyes went shiny, but her composure didn’t crack. “The cops wouldn’t let me have any of her stuff, not the cards I sent her, not her computer. I went over there to get something for her to wear. She had textbooks for this psychology course and some flowers in a vase in the kitchen, one of those bouquets you get at the supermarket. I keep thinking, if she could have found something to get serious about…”

I imagined the scene, a life cut short in midstream, the rest of the world running on around the absence, eventually washing over it. I thought about my old apartment—the sheets that hadn’t been changed, the half-eaten roll of cookie dough in the fridge, the risqué e-mails from my ex-boyfriend.

She pushed her coffee away. “I’ve got to clean it out eventually. Of course I do, it’s always me. And she’s family, flesh and blood, I ain’t denying it. But you tell me, what the hell do I do with all this?”

“I don’t know, Janie.” And we just sat there for five more minutes. And I was telling the truth—I didn’t know what to do next, especially not with my envelope full of illicit information—but I hoped that I would figure it out, and soon.

The jackhammer started again. Something always did.