Jazz Funeral (28 page)

Now they were in the middle of the cavernous squad room. People were staring. Skip still felt cool as a gin and tonic. She stopped and turned around. “Fine. What would you like me to do?”

“Follow up on Thiebaud, goddammit.”

She nodded. “Of course.” And glided back to her desk. Actually, you didn’t really glide when you were six feet tall and didn’t tell your weight, but she felt she came close.

Certainly she would follow up on Thiebaud. Just as she would if Frank were moldering in the grave. She was a professional. She’d follow up on other things as well. She simply wouldn’t mention them to Frank.

First, she went to do what she’d intended all along, declining to be stopped by the fact that she’d now been ignominiously ordered to do so. She went to Nick’s to poke around.

The housekeeper answered her knock. “Is Mr. Anglime here?”

The woman disappeared, came back and said he wasn’t. All as Skip had suspected.

“Okay. I wanted to talk to you anyway.” She produced her badge, explained her mission, and asked who had been at the house on Tuesday.

The housekeeper, of course, said she couldn’t answer a question like that—that would be up to Mr. Anglime. But fortunately, along came a kid of about nine or ten who didn’t stand on ceremony. “Hey, are you the lady cop? What do you want to know?” And once again the housekeeper went in search of Mr. Anglime.

He showed up shirtless, buckling his belt, hair uncombed. Skip was willing to bet he’d been having a little nap with the lovely Ti-Belle. “What the hell is this?”

“I wanted to see if there was anyone here who remembered seeing Ms. Thiebaud on Tuesday.”

“You think you can invade my house, disturb my guests, distress the staff—”

“Mr. Anglime, this is a murder case. If you’ll let me know who was here Tuesday, I’ll gladly see them on their own turf.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m trying to see if anyone can back up her story—and yours.”

“Mine? What are you talking about? Lady, I’m Nick Anglime. Who the hell do you think you are, questioning what I say?”

With those words, Skip’s stagestruck state shattered like a skim of ice. Suddenly she felt much more composed, for the first time in command with this man. She shrugged; even smiled. “It’s my job.”

Something in her manner must have communicated itself—or else he simply realized he’d acted like a jerk. “I’m sorry. Of course it is—I don’t know what I was thinking of.”

He let her in and said to the housekeeper, “Jessie, take care of Officer, uh …”

“Skip.”

He looked at her, puzzled.

“It’s Langdon; but call me Skip, please.” They’d been through this; he wouldn’t remember the next time either.

“Oh, yes.” He turned back to Jessie. “Help her any way you can.”

Jessie looked as if she’d rather eat toad stew. “This way, please.” She led the way to the kitchen, where there was a beautiful, long pine table, as nice as most people’s dining room tables, and asked her to sit. A man was in the kitchen making iced tea—the same man who’d been with Anglime at JazzFest.

“Hello,” he said, but didn’t introduce himself, just went on with his project as if she and Jessie weren’t there.

“How may I help you?” Jessie asked, the prim words spoken in a soft black accent, just as warm and sociable as she’d been aloof before.

When Skip repeated her mission, the housekeeper started reeling off names. There’d been a possible total of eleven people in the house Tuesday, including herself, aside from Anglime and Thiebaud.

They were Jessie Swan, housekeeper; James Fayard, another housecleaner and handyman; Sabrina Kostelnik, ex-girlfriend; Mia Anglime, her daughter and Nick’s; Eric and Scott Anglime, Nick’s sons with a Rachel Anglime; Caroline Meyer (aka Meyer-Roshi), Zen consultant; Nanette Underwood, acupuncturist, herbalist, and massage therapist; Ricky Roberts, cook; April Thomas, clerical worker; and Proctor Gaither, old friend.

When Jessie Swan got to Gaither, the man making tea, he waved to acknowledge that was he.

Of these, house guests included Kostelnik, the three children, Meyer, Underwood, and Gaither. Of the other four, none lived in and only Swan was full-time. Yes, she, Jessie, had been there Tuesday and, sure enough, so had Ms. Thiebaud. “All day?” asked Skip, thinking it didn’t matter what she said—she was in her boss’s house and likely to lie anyway. She’d interview the others on their own turf.

“All day and all day the day before and all day the day after,” said Swan.

That should have been that, but Proctor Gaither spoke up. “Except for when she went shopping.”

“Well, I didn’t know about that,” said Swan, slightly huffy.

“Sure. Tuesday afternoon? Around three or four, I think.”

“Well, I don’ know,” repeated Swan.

Skip said, “When did she return?”

But Gaither shrugged. “I don’t know. I just saw her leave, and then she was around for dinner.”

So Ti-Belle wasn’t getting off the hook quite so easily.

“Tell me something, Mr. Gaither.”

“Proctor.”

“Proctor. Doesn’t it get awkward with Ms. Kostelnik and Ms. Thiebaud around at the same time?”

“Awkward?” He seemed genuinely to be considering the idea. “No, I don’t think you’d call it awkward.”

“You wouldn’t?” She held her breath, not sure he’d answer.

But he was surprisingly forthcoming, even glib. “Sabrina and Nick are very good friends—as long as they don’t spend too much time with each other. She’s having a hard time, he wants to do right by his kids, so he lets her stay here, and the two of them bend over backward staying out of each other’s hair. He wants her to learn a useful trade, so she can get by on her own. Nanette’s teaching her Oriental medicine.”

“You don’t have to go to a special school for that?”

Her touched his chest. “You’re asking
moi
? I’m just an ol’ boy from Alabama.”

“Just out for JazzFest?”

He nodded. A shadow crossed his white-bread, good-ol’-boy face. “Getting divorced. Took some time off.”

“This is some household.”

“Never a dull moment. Nick’s a child of the sixties; look what he’s built here—an updated, upgraded, upscale commune, complete with resident guru—two if you count Nanette.” He shook his head. “No, she’s more like—don’t take this wrong, okay?— she’s more like a connection. Nothing illegal; nobody’d be so un-nineties as that—but she’s got what makes us feel good, even if it’s liver compresses nowadays.”

“Do they work?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t even know what they’re supposed to do. Nothing wrong with the massages, though.”

Skip half turned back to Jessie Swan, who was still sitting primly, patiently. “Is she around? I’d like to talk to her.”

Swan shook her head. “No’m. She and Sabrina went out some place with the roshi. Took the kids.”

“Ricky Roberts?”

“Day off.”

“Popeye’s, here we come,” said Proctor. “By the way, he cooks only nonfat vegetarian, and he can do macrobiotic if you really want it.”

Skip made a face; couldn’t help it, it just happened.

“Don’t knock it—it’s some of the best food you ever had. The man’s an artist.”

“Well, I’ll need the artist’s phone number,” she said to Swan. “Also April Thomas’s—she comes one day a week, I presume.”

Swan nodded, and went to look up numbers.

“What’s the roshi like?” she asked Proctor.

“Quiet. The one-hand-clapping type.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I wasn’t being sarcastic—I just meant she’s quiet. She’s certainly not a freeloader, if that’s what you’re thinking. Nick’s known her only about five years less than he’s known me—and he’s known me a millennium. But she’s not really a roshi and doesn’t claim to be—we just call her that because she’s—you know—holier than we are. She used to manage a club in the Village, where Nick had some of his first gigs. Then she got into Zen, studied to be a monk, and married another one. They split up, and got into some kind of tangle about money that she ended up being embarrassed about in the Zen community. She and Nick ran into each other again at Tassajara, she told him the whole story, and he asked her to come here and be his teacher until she decides what to do next. She designed the zendo and everything.”

Skip sighed. In matters of meditation, she could use a teacher. Swan came back, gave her the numbers she needed, and then Skip left, thinking Proctor Gaither had been a shade more talkative than was natural.

Patty stood in front of the little shotgun on Calhoun near Fontainbleau Drive, thinking it must not have been painted in fifteen years; you’d think no one lived there. The lawn hadn’t been mowed either. Her brothers usually kept up the lawn, but perhaps the house was so shabby they couldn’t do it any more, couldn’t find the heart even to do a few simple things. They couldn’t afford to have the house painted, couldn’t do it themselves—being too tired on weekends, too involved with their own families, maybe too depressed. And no one in the family would accept money from her, not that much anyway.

But they’d take a few little things, and today she’d brought clothes that she no longer wanted, some food that mourners had brought, an extra ham, a turkey, cakes, things she and George couldn’t eat. Before she left, she would give them money too, and they’d spend it on medicine, doctors, the usual things. They never had extras and they never seemed to want any. Not that they were so satisfied with their lives; they just didn’t connect the notion of themselves and luxury. Even tiny luxuries—she knew one of them would wear the denim dress she’d brought, and one might take the simple silk, but the evening dress would probably be cut up and made into costumes for children’s recitals.

She was depressed, just standing here, being here, and she hadn’t even gone in yet. A sense of futility hung over the Fournot house, always had, because of the illness. There were six of them, Patty and three sisters and two brothers—her mother had had them all before she knew she had it, or knew she could pass it on to them.

Her mother had been forty-two when she went blind for a couple of weeks and miraculously regained her sight. She had had a religious conversion before the other symptoms came on—the thing the doctors called “clumsy limb,” the slurred speech that made her think she’d had a stroke, and the facial pain. Whoever heard of facial pain? When her mother would say her face hurt, neither Patty nor the others would know what to say; they thought she must have gotten drunk and fallen down.

After an endless series of tests and misdiagnoses, one of the dozens of doctors she went to finally realized she had chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. A woman in her church had MS; she was relieved, knowing it was something you could live with. But there were two different kinds, the doctor explained: the kind the other woman had, which tended to relapse and remit; and the kind she, Lorraine, had, which would only get relentlessly worse, and which “ran in families.” Frannie, the second oldest sister, had come down with it eight years ago, at the age of thirty-two. The worse it got, the more her husband drank; he’d left her, finally.

Desiree took care of her and Lorraine. She lived here, in this small house, with her husband and two children and the two sick women.

No one came out to meet Patty. She went up the steps and knocked, lugging the clothes and a hamper. Ten-year-old Ashley, home from school, let her in, looking at her sleek hair, her tight Joan Vass pants and matching swingy little top, with the awed eyes of a child who’s never been shopping anyplace fancier than J.C. Penney. “Hi, Aunt Patty.”

“Hello, sweetness.” Patty bent to kiss her, trading the gift castoffs, nearly upending the hamper.

“Watch out!” It was her brother, Martin, catching things, taking them from her, but sounding angry.

“I’ve got more stuff in the car,” she said, and went to get the turkey and some lasagna, trailed by Ashley. No one else followed.

The two of them muscled the stuff into the kitchen, where Desiree was chopping onions and crying.

“Des, for heaven’s sake. Let me do it.”

It was like old times. While she was still in high school, Patty had saved enough money for contacts, which meant she could chop onions without crying. When she’d lived in this house, it had always been her chore.

Gladly, her sister handed over the knife and stared at Patty, a vision in the chic little cream-colored outfit, whimsical lemon flats on her feet, white-blond hair falling to her shoulders.

Ashley came and caught the sheet of hair in her hands: “Aunt Patty, your hair’s so pretty.”

“Yours too, sweetness,” said Patty absently. Ashley’s was thin, mouse-colored, and badly in need of shampoo. Patty looked up at her sister, caught her staring. “What is it, Des?”

“You do that so well. Like a professional.”

Patty was embarrassed. She probably hadn’t chopped an onion since she married George. “How’s Mama?”

“The same.”

“And Frannie?”

“Lively this week for some reason. They know you’re coming—I’ve brushed their hair.” And she clomped off to the last room, the one where they lived, in the two hospital beds Patty had bought for them. “Mama! Frannie! Patty’s here.”

“Well, where is she?”

“I’m coming, Mama.”

She finished the onions, washed her hands, and went in, feeling a little lift at the prospect of seeing her mother. But she didn’t look well, looked even less well than usual, smaller somehow.

Just about all she could do now was chew and swallow—and click the remote control for her television. She could talk, but she sounded as if she were drunk. Her limbs were limp, soggy logs. And Frannie was nearly as bad.

They were both diapered, didn’t even know when they excreted. Their limbs were rolled in sheets and cushions. They had to sleep on egg-crate mattresses to prevent bedsores. They were prisoners, but at least they could speak, they could eat. Patty thought how much worse it would be if they couldn’t communicate.

Frannie’s hair was almost completely gray now; she was younger than Patty and looked nearly as old as Mama. The television blathered, as always in this room. The blinds—not even miniblinds, ancient Venetian blinds, were closed. Patty had never seen them open. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live in one room, a dark one, and had begged Des to open the blinds every day, but Des said the patients wouldn’t permit it, they wanted nothing except to watch television, and who was to deny them their one pleasure? As if Patty meant them ill.