I pulled myself blearily upright. “Where are you? You okay?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, but there is a person here to talk to you. Can we come in?”
“No. Who is it?”
Bernie opened my bedroom door, still talking to me on her phone. “I don’t know who it is, some lady who wants to talk to you. When I saw all your clothes out front, I thought maybe you and Jake—”
“Right. Now get out and let me get dressed.”
When I’d pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, Bernie was waiting outside my bedroom door, anxious about my visitor. I was in that groggy state you get from heavy sleep in the middle of the day. I shook my head at her and went into the kitchen to make an espresso. While the machine heated, I ran cold water from the kitchen tap over my head.
Bernie followed me in. “What if she is another policeman? Or a killer? You should come see her now.”
“Don’t let strangers into the building, Bernie, in case they are police or killers. What did she say that made you let her in?”
Bernie shifted uncomfortably. “When I was unlocking the front door, coming back from work, she appeared next to me. She asked for you, asked if I knew you, and when I said, yes, of course, because I am living with you, she followed me.”
I let out a moan. “Bernie—after I get rid of her, we’ll have a little class on how to respond when people accost you. For now, go down the back stairs to your uncle Sal, in case she’s an ax murderer.”
When I’d scooted her out the kitchen door, I pulled two double shots. The first I drank in one breath, the second I carried with me—I could fling it in my visitor’s face if she turned violent.
Far from threatening violence, she was hovering in the hallway, looking nervously around as if fearing an ambush herself. Her honey-colored hair was swept back from her face as it had been when I saw, or claimed I saw her at St. Eloy’s two weeks earlier.
“You—you’re a detective, right?” she said.
“I am. And you are Jerry Fugher’s niece?”
“I—are we alone? Who was that girl?”
“The young woman you talked into letting you into the apartment lives here, she has a right to be here, so forget about her and focus on who you are and what you want.” I moved past her into the front room and sat cross-legged in my armchair, rubbing my calves, sore from this morning’s hike.
She perched on the edge of the piano bench. “How did you know he was my uncle?”
“I don’t, actually. I heard you call him that in church, the day I gave you my card. But Jerry Fugher didn’t have any siblings, so tell me who you are, and why you’re here.”
“He did have siblings.”
I was having trouble following her, even with the aid of espresso. “Have the police talked to you?”
“No! They don’t know about me, they can’t know about me.”
Murray would buy me dinner at Filigree for a month if he knew I had Fugher’s niece with me.
“Okay. Let’s go back to your uncle. Why did he keep his siblings a secret?”
“He didn’t do it on purpose, he never knew about us. My mother, she was his sister, but their mom, my grandma, she gave him away to this other family when he was born, so they adopted him. Then when my brother and I were sixteen, she was dying, our mother, I mean, and she told us about him, so we looked him up. He wasn’t very friendly, he wouldn’t even come to Mom’s funeral, but we didn’t have any other family, so we tried to stay in touch, sort of.”
She was winding a tissue around her fingers.
“And your name is?”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone, anyone at all, not the police or reporters or anyone!”
I looked at her curiously. “If you’ve committed a crime, I’m not going to hide you from the police.”
“I haven’t committed any crimes, but look what happened to Uncle Jerry!”
“I won’t tell anyone your name, but I can’t go on with this conversation until you reveal it.”
She looked around again. “Viola. Viola Mesaline. Where did you see Uncle Jerry? Is he really dead?”
“He’s in the morgue but the police showed me photos taken of him in the coal dust at the Guisar dock. If you want to see his body, or claim him for burial, you’ll have to talk to the police, let them know you’re his next of kin.”
Viola sprang from the piano bench. “I can’t! I—please! You mustn’t tell them about me.”
“Ms. Mesaline, please. If you want to talk to me, sit down, talk to me, but if you can’t trust me, then leave.” I finished my second coffee, wishing it was doing a better job of clearing my wits.
Viola sat again, about an inch of her body touching the bench. She’d made up her mind to talk to me when she decided to look me up, but the story was slow in starting. She stopped frequently to demand my silence while she listened to footsteps on the stairs.