Warm and fuzzy feelings aside, Dan would know how to get in touch with Vera, and that’s what I needed, someone who could give me firsthand information about why she’d really died.
I’d already given up hope of that ever happening when a car pulled up the road and parked behind mine. Two people got out, a man and a woman. The man was tall and balding. He was wearing plaid pants and a golf shirt. The woman was dressed in a summery printed skirt and a T-shirt as white as her hair. She was small and so frail-looking, I worried that the next brisk wind might blow her right away. They headed in my direction.
What were the chances I’d just gotten the answer to my prayers? Slim and none, I suspected, but I waited anyway. It must have been my lucky day. The woman carried a bunch of daisies and a bottle of water, and she filled the flower holder next to Vera’s grave and set the bouquet in it.
I stepped forward. “Are you Vera’s parents?”
The woman nodded. “I’m Natalie.” She looked at the man at her side. “This is George. And you…” Natalie studied me through filmy eyes. “You’re not one of Vera’s friends. You can’t be. You’re too young.”
“Actually, I work here at Garden View. I’ve been doing some research about Vera. About her murder.”
The word was enough to cause George to wince and make Natalie suddenly look older and as fragile as the flowers in the vase at our feet. George’s expression was rigid. Natalie blinked away a tear. “She was a beautiful girl,” she said. “Everybody loved her.”
“Not everybody.” George didn’t like my comment. I could tell from the way his jaw tightened. Natalie brushed her hand over her cheeks. I couldn’t let that stop me. “The fact that she was murdered pretty much means somebody didn’t like her,” I said.
Natalie shook herself away from the memories, and with George’s help, she got down on her knees and pulled a couple clumps of shaggy grass away from Vera’s headstone. “Someone went to jail for it.”
“You said someone. You didn’t say the killer.”
Her head snapped up. “He was tried and convicted.”
“But you don’t think he did it.”
It wasn’t a question, but I hoped they’d answer it, anyway.
“We told the police about Steve,” George said, his gaze fixed to the horizon. “I guess they didn’t listen.”
“Steve. Steve Ganley.” I’d seen the name listed in the file of people who’d been interviewed after Vera’s murder. “He was-”
“She called him her boyfriend.” Natalie rumbled a little harrumph, and I knew exactly what that meant. I’d heard my mother use that same tone when she didn’t approve of whatever boy I’d been dating at the time.
“You didn’t like him.” I didn’t care which of them answered, so I looked from Natalie to George.
“Had a temper.” George jingled the change in his pocket. “We told the police that, too. We thought once she moved away from Cleveland and took that job down there at Central State-”
“We thought they’d stop seeing each other. But Vera…” As if she still couldn’t understand it, Natalie shook her head. “There’s no accounting for taste. That’s what I always told George. I told him that maybe there was something about Steve we just didn’t understand, some good qualities Vera had discovered.”
“But you never saw any of them.”
The jingling from George’s pocket grew louder. “Never saw much of anything from him,” he said. “He wouldn’t show his face around our place, not after the first time we saw bruises on our Vera’s arm.”
“He hit her?”
Natalie chewed her lower lip. It was up to George to tell the rest of the story. “Vera said it was an accident. She said he didn’t mean it. But I think-”
“We told her she should stop coming back and forth to Cleveland to see him.” Natalie struggled to haul herself to her feet, and I gave her a hand. “We begged her to stop letting him go down to her apartment near Central State to visit. I don’t think she ever listened.”
“So you think he was the one she was meeting at the Lake View Motel that night?” It was a sensitive question, but I couldn’t afford to shy away from it. “Did you tell the cops that?”
“We told the police everything. They said…” George shrugged. “They said it wasn’t him.” He swigged his nose. “Doesn’t matter anymore. None of it. Not anymore.”
I didn’t argue with him, even though I knew he was wrong. What really mattered was that he’d given me another piece of the puzzle that was Vera Blaine’s murder, and another name I could check in the file I’d left at home.
Until then, I went back to the office and got back on the Internet. I didn’t know if the Steve Ganley I found in the Cleveland phone book listing was the same man who’d once bruised Vera Blaine’s arm, but I intended to find out. I wrote down the business address listed, tucked the paper in my purse, and met Ella in the conference room to go over the details of the art show.
She was predictably ecstatic about the idea, and when she volunteered to do all she could to help promote the event, I wasn’t about to argue.
I had other things to take care of.
I left Garden View and stopped at Monroe Street long enough to let my team know I had someplace to go and I’d be back in an hour or so. All would have gone as planned if they hadn’t just planted a couple shrubs. The dirt was newly turned, the sprinklers were on, and my feet went out from under me. My purse flew in one direction, and I went down in the other. In a heap, right in the mud.
Absalom was standing close by. He grabbed my arm, and with one hand, lifted me out of the muck.
I looked down and groaned. Mud covered my khakis and caked the once-pristine emerald green shirt I’d worn with them that day.
“You say you had somewhere to go this morning?” Sammi cringed when she looked at the filth that covered me. “I might have something in the car you could put on.”
I knew better than to say yes, but what’s that saying about desperate times and desperate measures?
Within ten minutes, I was wearing a denim skirt that would have been short on Sammi. On me, it was minuscule. On Sammi’s small frame, the purple T-shirt with St. James emblazoned on it would have been snug. On me, it was just about obscene.
I squirmed. “I can’t go out in public like this!”
“I dunno.” This from Reggie, along with an appreciative look that made my skin crawl. “You’re looking pretty awesome!”
“Pretty something. But not awesome.” I tugged at the skirt.
“You’ll be fine.” Absalom had rescued my purse from the mud, and he wiped it down with a wet paper towel. When he did, it opened, and the paper I’d tucked inside it at Garden View fluttered out. He picked it up, looked it over. “Steve Ganley?”
“Steve the Strip Man?” Reggie darted forward and plucked the paper out of Absalom’s hand. “You’re going to see Steve the Strip Man?”
I wasn’t liking the sound of this, but I wasn’t about to back down, either. Not even when Reggie looked me over one more time, whistled below his breath, and said, “You’re dressed just right!”
I was hoping Steve the Strip Man refinished furniture. Or painted cars. Those hopes were dashed when I pulled up to the address on my computer printout and saw a hot pink neon sign that said: THE THUNDERING STALLION, A GENTLEMAN’S CLUB.
I laid my head on my steering wheel and groaned.
It was early, but according to the sign up front, the Stallion thundered twenty-four, seven. When I walked in, there were a couple men sitting at the bar and a girl on stage in a G-string, sequined pasties, and stilettos so high even I wouldn’t wear them. She looked bored, and hardly old enough to be there. The dozen or so guys in the audience didn’t seem to care.
The beefy bouncer at the door pointed me in the right direction, and I found Steve Ganley in a corner pouring over a pile of papers. He was a middle-aged guy with a paunch and a comb-over. There was an open bottle of scotch on the table in front of him.