Cold and Pure and Very Dead (16 page)

“You two aren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses, are you?” The voice came through the half-open glass door before we even set foot on the flagstone front walk.

“No, not at all,” I replied as I took the six steps from the road to the front door with Sophia trailing behind me.

“Well, I’m not
buying
anything.” Lolita had the still-scratchy voice of the one-time smoker. I couldn’t see her behind the door; it was summertime-bright in the yard, darker inside the house.

“We’re not selling anything, Ms. Lapierre. I’m Karen Pelletier, an English professor from Enfield College, and this is Sophia Warzek, my … assistant. We’re here to talk to you about your aunt and cousin.”

“My aunt and cousin? You mean—Bernice and Lorraine?” The heavy glass door opened abruptly, and the woman who stepped out surprised me. Blonde, petite,
well-groomed, she looked like nothing either her name or her smoker’s rasp had prepared me for. Or, I realized with a jolt, my preconceptions about “trailer trash.” Lolita Lapierre radiated self-discipline: A woman in mid-life, she kept her compact body in shape. Her short hair had been cut and colored by a savvy stylist, and she was dressed in olive-drab shorts and a slate-gray sleeveless T that had most likely come straight from the racks of the Banana Republic I’d noted a half block down from the college. She assessed me with steady grape-green eyes. “An English professor, huh? Then this must be about
Oblivion Falls
. Come in.”

We stepped into a small dining area furnished with a yellow fifties enamel-top kitchen table and four matching chairs. The mobile home’s living room was likewise modest in scale, but furnished carefully with an eye to space, light, and color: a simple, straight-armed couch in a bright yellow, a red upholstered chair in a retro fifties print, a restored antique wide-slat oak rocker.

“This is
nice,”
I said.

“Surprised?” Lolita’s sharp reply was defensive.

“Makes my place look like a dump.” I laughed. “You could put a sign on my living room wall:
FURNISHED WITH COMPLIMENTS OF THE SALVATION ARMY.”
Not only was this true, but it seemed to be the right thing to say. Our hostess relaxed.

Sophia sat on the red chair, and I took the cushioned rocker. A striped orange cat jumped into my lap and settled down as if he intended to spend a year or two.

“That’s Willie. He’s a pest,” Lolita said. “Chase him off if he bothers you. Can I get you some iced tea?” she asked. “Coke? Apple juice?”

Willie was purring. He gazed at me with amber
eyes, then began washing a white paw. I was charmed. “It’s fine. He can stay,” I replied. “And iced tea would be nice.” I set the chair to rocking, and patted the cat’s soft head. That was nice, too; it had been a long time since I’d had a pet.

Lolita was all business when she came back with the tall glasses. “So, ladies,” she asked, “how can I help you?” She sat on a blue vinyl swivel chair.

I had my story all ready; in a way, Milly Finch had given it to me. “I’m writing a biography of Mildred Deakin.” I hated to lie to this woman, but didn’t think an announcement that I was engaged in an unauthorized homicide investigation would be the swiftest way to get her talking. “I know your families were close in the … the old days, and I wondered if there was anything you could tell me about her or her childhood—any family stories you would be willing to share.…”

“Ha!” Lolita’s laugh was like a bark. She stared at me incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding. Our families were not
close
. My aunt
worked
for the Deakin family. Oh, there was
charity
of course, but nothing resembling intimacy. And, then, because of Milly Deakin’s book my cousin’s reputation was dragged through the mud and my aunt committed suicide. You really expect me to come up with warm, fuzzy family stories for public consumption?”

“Well, I …” I hadn’t expected such a sharp reaction and found myself at a loss for words. Then Sophia spoke. She had been studying Lolita carefully, taking the measure of the woman.

“Karen, I think we ought to tell her—”

“Tell me
what?”
In the blue chair, Lolita swiveled to stare at her, then swiveled back to me. “I may live in a trailer park,
Professor
Pelletier …” She stressed the “Professor” sarcastically, making me cringe. If I’d had
preconceptions about her, she also had them about me. “…  but I’m no ignoramus. I read the papers. I know things have been happening—that
Oblivion Falls
has become a bestseller again, that Milly Deakin’s just been found after all these years, that she’s been charged with homicide.” She turned to Sophia. “Is
that
what this is all about—that murder?” My companion nodded, then glanced at me with trepidation. I shrugged. Lolita swiveled back to me. “What are you really, Ms. Pelletier—if that’s your name? Some kind of cop?”

“No, no,” I said. I felt terrible; I’d screwed this up big time, insulting and alienating the one person who might most be able to help Milly Deakin Finch. “I’m who I say I am. It’s just that—I’m not really here about a biography.”

“Well, whadd’ya know—”

I raised a hand to forestall whatever well-deserved invective was coming. “Listen,” I pleaded. “Just listen for a minute.” I went on to tell Mildred Deakin’s … what would she be? a foster niece? foster cousin? … about my visit to Milly Finch in jail. “She’s old and defeated, Ms. Lapierre, snatched out of a farming life
I
don’t understand at all but that
she
loves. I truly do not think she killed anyone. That’s why I’m here. It’s possible the roots of the reporter’s murder lie in Milly’s past life, maybe even here in Stallmouth.”

Lolita was silent for a moment. When she spoke again it was with the musing tone of one who reassesses a past so distant that its recollected power surprised her. “My mother resented Milly Deakin for a long time, until …” Her carefully shaped eyebrows puckered. “But I never thought she was bad. Milly just didn’t think about consequences. I remember her quite well, you know.”

“Oh. Really?” I shouldn’t have been surprised.
What had Anna Mae said? That Lolita was born during the Korean War? That would put her in her late forties now, even though she looked younger. Of course she would have known Mildred Deakin.

“Yeah, I was just a little girl and she was like a fairy godmother to me. So pretty and sweet. Once she brought me a bride doll, once a yellow dress. It was dotted Swiss with eyelet, and I had patent leather Mary Janes. It was the only nice thing … And then there was—” She broke off abruptly, and her tone altered. “But that has nothing to do with anything. You come here under false pretenses, condescending to me, lying to me. And you expect—”

Reluctantly I plucked the orange cat from my lap and set him on the floor. “You’re absolutely right,” I said, rising from my chair. “I feel like such a shit. And I don’t expect anything. Please accept my apologies, Ms. Lapierre. I’m sorry for having deceived you and offended you.” I picked up my iced-tea glass from the end table. “Thank you for the tea. I’ll just put this in the kitchen on my way out.”

She took the half-finished iced tea from my hand and replaced it on the small table. “On your way out? Where do you think you’re going? I have things to tell you.”

W
hen Sophia and I
left the mobile home community, we pulled up to the stop sign at the end of Edgemont Drive. I signaled to turn left and was waiting for a break in the traffic when someone knocked on the driver’s-side window. “You girls goin’ back to town?” the stout white-haired woman asked.

“Sure. Hop in.” Cadging rides seemed to be this woman’s primary mode of transport. I could picture her peering out her trailer’s windows waiting, toadlike, for a car—any car—to pull up to the stop sign, then—
zap
.

Our hitchhiker settled herself on the backseat, elaborately straightening her wraparound denim skirt, then slammed the door shut. I waited for a lime-green Volkswagen bug to pass, then hung a quick left. Sophia and I had not spoken since we’d said good-bye to Lolita Lapierre; we were still living somewhere in her past.

“So, how’s Her Highness?” our passenger asked, after a moment or two of silence.

“Her Highness?” It was almost five o’clock and traffic had picked up this Sunday evening, students heading back to campus after a weekend at home, tourists heading home after a weekend in the mountains.

“Yeah. Queen Lolita. How is she? You wuz in there long enough to find out.”

Sophia and I exchanged puzzled looks, but my young
friend left the talking to me. “Ms. Lapierre seems quite well.” I settled the Subaru into the stream of traffic.

“She would. Always looking out for number one, that lady. What’d you girls talk to her about?” Curiosity vied with hostility in her tone.

“Oh … things.” Small-town gossip could be useful, but I had no intention of sharing Lolita Lapierre’s business with this harpy.

“You wuz talking about that Milly Deakin, I bet. Her that wrote that book that caused such a ruckus. Her that killed the newspaper fellow over in New York. You two don’t fool me, you know, coming in here, talking so smooth.” She suddenly fell silent.

Then she slapped her forehead with an open palm. I could hear the smack from the front seat. “Jeez. How stupid could I be? I bet you’re reporters, too. Jeez Louise! I should get somethin’ for putting you two on to Queen Lolita. How about it? I could sure use a twenty.” In the rearview mirror, I could see the small eyes squinted in calculation. “And, who knows,” she continued in a wheedling tone, “maybe I got more information the papers would like to know about, and maybe you got more twenties.”

I resisted the impulse to stop the car and throw this woman out into traffic. “Sorry, lady, we’re not reporters, and we don’t have money to throw around. But I do appreciate you letting us know where Ms. Lapierre lives.” I scooted around an old blue pickup and pulled up in front of Vinnie’s Exxon in the center of town. “Now is this where you wanted to get out?”

Our passenger opened the back door and set her Reeboks on the asphalt, but she didn’t get out of the car. “I’ll bet Her Majesty didn’t tell you nothin’ about how her and that Gracie got so high and mighty all of a sudden? Them Lapierres never had two nickels to rub
together, ya know. There was lots of talk around here, you bet, when Gracie Lapierre came up with the cash to buy that luncheonette. Why don’tcha ask Queen Lolita where that money come from, huh? See what she says.” I revved the engine, and our passenger stepped hastily out of the Subaru with insufficient attention to the wraparound skirt. It billowed up around her, revealing a glimpse of flabby white thigh. She fussed the flapping denim back into place. A hefty white-haired mechanic stood in the open bay of the garage. Wiping a large wrench with a red cloth, he turned to watch us, narrowing his eyes against the glare of the late-afternoon sun.

“Good-bye,” I said, and began accelerating before the car’s back door had quite closed. Then I felt a twinge of compassion. “I hope you get home okay.”

“Poor woman,” Sophia said, as we pulled back onto Main Street.

“Nasty, jealous bitch,” I amended.

“That, too,” Sophia agreed.

L
olita Lapierre
had indeed told us where the money for the restaurant came from. We’d talked for a long time about her poverty-stricken childhood in Stallmouth, Sophia and I joining in when Lolita’s tale struck a particularly resonant note: shabbiness, exclusion, shame. You’d think a person who’s succeeded in making a good life for herself would get over the rough beginnings. You’d think a mature, well-integrated personality would let go of the run-down, outgrown shoes, the free school lunches, the schoolyard catcalls. The low expectations of teachers. The never having
anything
. You’d think …

Lolita had been six and a half years old when the letter came. She remembered her mother puzzling over it, this official-looking, thick, cream-colored envelope
with the return address of a Manhattan law firm. Gracie had wiped her dishwater-wet hands on her apron and sat down with the letter. Lolita, who’d just gotten home from school, was drinking milk at the kitchen table across from her mother. “More trouble, most likely,” Gracie had said, and slit the envelope with a table knife. “Whaaa?” she exclaimed at its contents, and sat there blankly for “a gazillion years,” as Lolita recalled it, before she began to cry. Lolita remembered throwing her arms around her mother and pleading to know what the “trouble” was. “No trouble,” Gracie had replied, tears turning into hiccups, “no trouble, Little Flower. Just some … unexpected news.” But she’d kept the nature of that news to herself.