Jazz Funeral (27 page)

When the biter gave up, the fight went out of the crowd. The sudden meanness that can come from too much beer had passed, and the more accustomed mellowness had slipped back home. Couples who’d stopped dancing to join the fray were starting again to twirl and two-step.

Nick said, “First time I’ve ever been rescued by a woman.”

The cop grinned. “It’ll cost you one autograph.”

He couldn’t help it, he liked her. She was a nervy damn broad.

Proctor said, “You okay, Nick?”

“Except for a bitten neck. The skin isn’t broken, is it?”

The cop looked, standing close yet remaining professional. He liked having her that close. He wasn’t used to big women—and she was definitely big, not just tall. There was something about it he liked—something vaguely maternal. He’d never go out with a woman that overweight, but still, there was something.

“Looks okay,” the cop said.

“Shit,” said Nick. “This is the last time. I’m never doing this again.”

“Never doing what?” asked the cop.

He wasn’t sure. Never going back to JazzFest? Never going out in public? He was tired of feeling like a prisoner. How the hell was he supposed to live?

“Officer! Officer Langford!”

Skip looked around to see a very distressed young man waving frantically. He looked worried and upset in that exaggerated way only those under twenty can look—she knew it usually meant they’ve missed a question on an exam or something equally earthshaking, but it made her want to hug them and play Mom.

She waved and walked over. “It’s Langdon,” she said, “but thanks for remembering my face.”

“Oh. I, uh …” He seemed not to know what to say.

“You’re Flip Phillips, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Melody’s ex.”

It was all she could do not to laugh. High school kids and their “exes” were so wonderfully dramatic about their three- or four-week relationships.

“I saw Melody,” he said.

“Here? Today?”

“A few minutes ago. See, I knew she’d come today to see Ti-Belle sing. So I cut school to come find her.” He looked extremely pleased with himself. Skip was willing to bet he’d never cut school before in his life and wouldn’t have done it today if he hadn’t convinced himself it was necessary for the greater good of the human race. This one was no Ferris Bueller, but he seemed pretty smug about bringing off such wildly criminal behavior. Skip was happy for him; he seemed a young man who had far too many rules in his life, most of them of his own making. Wrinkles seemed his only vice. Even now, in the most casual of settings, he wore a button-down shirt—wrinkled but correct to the point of stiffness.

He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at his shoes. “I’ve been feeling really bad about what I did.”

“Dumping Melody?”

He winced. “I wouldn’t exactly call it that.”

Skip was rapidly changing her assessment of him—beginning to think he had a great career ahead as a white-collar criminal. He was enjoying his first foray into the forbidden, and proving to have great capacities for denial. She wondered if he’d think of a way to describe cutting school without exactly calling it that.

“I wanted to talk to her and tell her I was sorry. I guess. I don’t know—I just wanted to see her. To be sure she was okay.”

Skip nodded.

“Well, I didn’t see her at Ti-Belle’s set. There were a million people there, and anyway, I was looking for the wrong Melody. She’s completely different now. See, later I was just standing around, looking over the crowd, still trying to find her, and I see these knees—”

“I beg your pardon?”

He was blushing slightly. And becomingly. “There was this girl I saw with gorgeous legs—they reminded me of Melody’s—so I was, you know, checking her out. And she had Melody’s scar. Melody has a little crescent-shaped scar on her right knee. So I think, Melody’s legs, Melody’s scar, holy shit! And I look up and the girl does a double-take and starts running.”

“It was Melody?”

“Well, yeah, it had to be. But I know her really well. Better than anybody else, I bet, and I didn’t even recognize her.”

“Did you chase her?”

“Of course.” He shrugged. “But she’s not that tall and I guess it wasn’t that hard to get lost in the crowd.”

“Okay. What does she look like now?”

“New Age. She’s got short blond hair that’s purple in front. And different makeup or something. I don’t know—maybe she had plastic surgery.”

“You’re absolutely sure this was Melody?”

“It was Melody’s scar. I know that scar.”

“Shit.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing to do with you.”
And everything to do with Andy Fike
. She sighed. “Okay. Let’s go find her.”

“What?”

“Let’s walk around till we find her.”

“Okay. Sure.” He seemed delighted to be told what to do. This was a kid who was most comfortable taking orders. In a way, she could see how he and Melody had been attracted to each other—she was the outlaw, he the good citizen; halves of a whole.

They started to walk, eyes peeled and scanning. Something was bothering Skip. Why was the kid blowing the whistle on Melody? Was the whole thing an elaborate hoax?

She made him wait while she put in a call to Andy Fike, who was home as usual, and slightly slurred of speech.

“Andy, how’d Melody look yesterday?”

“Pretty good, for a chick that’s been through what she has.”

“Damn you, Andy. Start describing.”

“Okay, okay, five feet three, skinny, blond, blue eyes.”

“Anything else about her hair?”

“Short, purple in front, ugliest thing I ever saw.”

“I could kill you, you know that?”

“Hey, you never asked what she looked like—I figured you knew.”

Sure.
But at least Flip wasn’t lying about that part. She caught up with him again. They walked for nearly half an hour, Skip turning over different strategies in her head and coming up with no clever, devious way to confront the kid.

Oh, hell, she finally decided. Go for the direct approach.

“Hey, Flip,” she said, “why’d you decide to tell me about this? A lot of kids would have helped their friend get away.”

He was walking beside her, so she couldn’t see his full face. But his neck turned a good deep red. “Yeah, I know. There’s nothing worse than a snitch.” He paused, apparently finding it hard to talk about. This was a kid who worked so hard to do the right thing, he probably went nuts when a dilemma came along. “I really, really thought about it. I’ve got to say I still don’t know if it’s right or not. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want me turning her in—stands to reason, doesn’t it? But I thought of what she told me her shrink said once—I mean, she was really mad about it, but I know Melody and I think it was true. She said Melody’s her own worst enemy a lot of times. So I thought about all this, and when all’s said and done, she needs to get found. It’s the only way out. Anyway, she got real mad at me when Dr. Richard said that and I kind of agreed with her. I mean, not about everything, but a lot of stuff.”

He was babbling on and Skip was barely hearing him. She had heard only one word. If Skip had been mad at Andy Fike, that was nothing to the way she was currently feeling about George and Patty. Why in the living hell hadn’t they told her?

“Her shrink?” she said when Flip paused for breath, aware too late that she’d shrieked the query.

Flip stared as if she’d gone crazy. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Her shrink. Like a head doctor?”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?” She knew it was an unreasonable thing to ask, but at this point she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. A teacher had said Melody should be in therapy—why hadn’t she thought to ask if she was? Why hadn’t anyone thought to tell her? Surely if Melody was in touch with anybody, it was her therapist.

“I’m sorry,” Flip said. “I didn’t know it was important.”

“Flip, listen, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled—it’s not your fault.”

“Well, it is partly, I guess.”

“Come on, forget it. Just tell me who it is.”

“Dr. Richard,” he said, almost instantly cheered up. “Madeleine Richard.” He pronounced it
Ri-SHARD.

“Thanks. Are you tired of looking around?” They’d now made several complete tours of the fairgrounds, and the crowds were getting thicker by the minute.

He said, “I have a feeling she split after she saw me.”

“Okay. Can you get home okay?”

He looked insulted. “Sure.”

“You’ll call if you hear from Melody?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I’ve got to.” He was atlas bearing the weight of the world; the kid was going to have wrinkles in more than his clothes before he was thirty. “Listen, I want to say something else about Melody. I was right about her coming to see Ti-Belle, wasn’t I?”

“You sure were.”

“She’ll come again on Sunday. When the Boucrees sing.”

“Oh, yes. Joel’s her buddy.”

“She just worships him is all.” Skip thought she caught a hint of jealousy in his voice.

She went back to headquarters to check messages and do some catching up. There was a message, all right—a note from Frank O’Rourke, her least favorite sergeant. It was terse, arrogant, and utterly typical: “Report to me at once.”

Why the fuck should I?
came to mind, but it was almost instantly replaced by a nagging horror, a deep-seated dread.

She grabbed up the note and went to Joe Tarantino’s office. He was talking on the phone, but motioned her in anyway. For five minutes she cooled her heels, mentally composing her letter of resignation if Joe told her what she thought he was going to tell her. He hung up the phone and said, “You’re as white as that paper you’re holding.”

She said, “Am I permanently assigned to O’Rourke?”

He sat back in his chair, lips together. “Damn, Skip. Cappello got hurt.”

“Oh, shit.” She didn’t normally swear in the presence of superiors, but this was the “oh, shit” found in every black box of every crashed plane—the universal phrase of pilots about to grow wings.

“A suspect pushed her down a flight of stairs.” He paused. “Hurt her back real bad—looks like it’s going to be about six months.”

“Oh, shit,” she said again. It must have happened so fast; it could happen to anyone—worse could.

“I know how you feel about O’Rourke. Listen, I wouldn’t have done this if I had a choice.”

She nodded. “Thanks, Lieutenant. I know you wouldn’t.” She knew he’d already said too much. He’d more or less apologized for assigning her to O’Rourke, even though that was his privilege. He wasn’t going to say any more, and he certainly wasn’t going to back down.

She went to find her tormentor. “Langdon. Where the hell have you been?” He got up and led her to an interview room, bellowing as they walked.

“At the fairgrounds. Seeing Ti-Belle Thiebaud.”

“What for, may I ask?”

“Trying to find out where she was at the time of the murder.”

“And did you?”

“I got her alibi. That’s all.”

“Did it check out?”

“I just got back. Haven’t checked it yet.”

“Check it.”

She thought she’d scream. But he wasn’t nearly done and she knew it.

“Run down the case for me, Langdon. What have you done, what are your plans?”

Feeling like a child in the principal’s office, she did, ending with her afternoon with Flip.

“The kid’s out there, goddammit.”

“Why goddammit? We know she’s not dead, and we know what she looks like.”

“Why the fuck don’t we have her?”

“I think there’s a good chance she’ll contact this Richard. I’m going over there now.”

“Langdon. Have you checked Thiebaud’s police record?”

An unbelievably condescending question. “Of course.”

“How about the other suspects?”

“Who are the suspects?”

“You tell me, Langdon—you’re the officer on the damn case.”

She took a breath, trying to control her anger. “The parents, the uncles, the cousins, the assistant, the girlfriend, and Melody.”

“Forget the uncles and cousins. This is a crime of passion, Langdon. Who probably did it? Just speaking statistically?”

“The girlfriend, but—”

“So who’re you going to work on, Langdon?”

This was ridiculous. She’d just told him she’d been working on Ti-Belle. “Look,” she said. “She’s got an alibi and no motive.”

“You don’t know whether she had a damn motive, do you? Maybe Ham said he was porking the assistant, and the Cajun stabbed him. And you haven’t checked the alibi, you just told me that.”

“Actually, I’ve checked it with the guy she said she was with. I was just going to do a little more work on it.”

“What work?”

“Ask the servants.”

“Who’s the guy?”

“Nick Anglime.”

“Nick Anglime.” O’Rourke rocked back in his chair. His face took on such a look of smug contempt, she wanted to break his nose. “You believed him, of course, because you’re starstruck like some kid Melody’s age.”

It felt as if the temperature had gone up ten degrees. Skip’s neck and face were scorching. Sweat was popping out at her hairline. She clenched the edge of her chair, to give her anger a place to go. And still wanted to fly at his face. She swallowed, trying to think, and wondered if her eyes were bugging out from the effort of control. Finally, she thought of Cindy Lou. What, she wondered, would Cindy Lou do in a situation like this?

When the answer came, it was so right she almost smiled. Her fingers relaxed. Cindy Lou wouldn’t answer his insulting questions, would decline once and for all the bait he kept cramming down her throat. She wouldn’t sit here submissively, like some kid getting chewed out at school. She’d call him on his own bad behavior. Suddenly, Skip was calm as a Buddhist monk.

She said, “Oh, Frank, don’t be such a bully,” got up and left.

He shouted, “Young lady, you come back in here!”

She tried not to laugh out loud. She wanted to look—sure he’d turned a gorgeous shade of watermelon—but she wasn’t turning full-face around. Instead she gave him only a glance over his shoulder. “That’s it for today, Frank.” She kept walking.

He followed, bellowing, “Goddammit, Langdon, I’m your sergeant.”