“I had a bunch of those when I was a kid,” I said, looking at the bracelets. The memory made me feel, in spite of the years, as if there were a connection between me and Vera. I guess that’s why my eyes misted. I knew I needed a distraction and needed one fast. Now that Lamar had discovered that I was a competent PI, I didn’t need him to think I was a crybaby girl. I found what I was looking for when I caught a glimpse of a page marked DECEASED’S PERSONAL EFFECTS.
Clearing my throat, I read it over. “Purse with wallet containing sixteen dollars and forty-seven cents. Makeup, lipstick, one package Trojan condoms. Hmmmm.” I thought this over, then got back to reading. “Black duffel bag containing fishnet stockings, a lace T-shirt, denim jacket with sewn on beads and lace, a black miniskirt.” The condoms made sense to me, the rest of it? I thought it over for a while before the truth dawned, and I whistled below my breath. “That’s weird, isn’t it? According to the newspaper reports, Vera didn’t check into the motel until around seven that evening. Her body was found a little after two in the morning. You were quoted…” I dug through the pile of newspaper clippings until I found the one I was looking for. “Here,” I held it up for him to see. “You were quoted as saying that Vera hadn’t requested to take the next day as a vacation or personal day. Which tells me she wasn’t planning on staying at the Lake View overnight.”
While Lamar processed all this, I kept right on thinking out loud. “Which means she shouldn’t have needed a change of clothes. Unless…” I thought some more. About the condoms, and the fishnets stockings, and the rest of that outfit, one that would have turned even the sweetest-faced cocker spaniel into a hot-to-trot French poodle. “Vera was obviously meeting somebody. I mean, why hang out at a motel otherwise? But maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe she had a little something going on the side. Maybe she was turning tricks or something.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lamar’s rumble would have shaken the windows if the old mausoleum had any. “She wasn’t that kind of girl.”
“Her wardrobe says otherwise.” I looked through the list again, then looked at Vera’s picture. “She came and went dressed for the office. In a shirt she wore that day that still had a little bit of your blood on it from when you cut yourself. That explains why she never changed out of the bloodstained shirt before she left Central State. She didn’t have to. By the time her date”-I gave this word the emphasis it deserved-“arrived, she knew she’d have her party clothes on, so she didn’t care about the stain. And getting ready to leave, she changed her clothes so that when she got back home, she looked just like she looked when she left for the office that day.”
I narrowed my eyes, imagining Vera transformed into a vampy punk. “At the very least, Little Miss Buttoned-down here must have been planning a party. And my guess was that it was with some sicko who liked his girls even younger than twenty-two. That would explain all those jelly bracelets.”
Not to Lamar, of course.
“Jelly bracelets were a teenaged thing and a kid thing. I told you, I had some back then, and I was maybe five. I don’t think those bracelets were a wardrobe staple for a young career woman, at least not one who normally dressed like she just stepped out of the Official Preppy Handbook.”
Lamar looked uncomfortable with the whole notion, and I guess I couldn’t blame him. It must have been freaky to have to face the fact that his little secretary might have led a double life. His eyebrows plummeted and he twitched his shoulders. “It has to be some sort of mistake. She never looked like that at the office.”
“Well, I doubt if the killer brought that stuff with him.” Done with the list of Vera’s personal items, I tucked it away and drummed my fingers against the aluminum arm of the lawn chair. I knew I didn’t have to ask Lamar. After all, I’d just read the newspaper articles. But I asked anyway, just to gauge his reaction. “That’s what they said, right? In the newspapers and in court, I mean. The cops’ theory was that you met Vera at the Lake View for a little extracurricular hanky-panky, things got out of hand, and bang!” I slapped my hand against the arm of the chair hard enough to make Lamar jump.
If he wasn’t already dead, he would have been as white as a ghost.
He ran his tongue over his lips. “That’s exactly what they said. But they never had any proof. They couldn’t have had any proof.”
“Because there was no proof to have.”
“Exactly.” He lifted his chin and pulled back his shoulders. “I told you before-”
“I know.” I waved away any chance that he might give me the I-am-innocent speech again. “I’m just trying to think like they were thinking, and they were thinking what I’m thinking. At least if they were thinking that there was more to Vera than met the eye. You never got the vibe from her at the office, huh? She never came on to you?”
His shoulders shot back just a little more. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. I’m being objective. Or at least I’m trying to be objective. So, being objective…” I stood and did a turn around the mausoleum, carefully avoiding that gaping hole in the floor. “Here’s what I think. I think this might have played out in a couple different ways. Number one, when the killer arrived, Vera’s date might have just left. She’s already changed out of her play clothes and she’s back in her everyday duds and getting ready to head back home. When there’s a knock on the door, she naturally assumes it’s her lover. After all, he hasn’t been gone all that long.”
Lamar’s eyebrows rose, and I knew a question was going to follow.
“The jelly bracelets,” I said, fingering my own arm as if I had a mess of them on. “She’d changed her clothes, but she hadn’t had a chance to take off the bracelets yet.”
Seeing the logic, he nodded.
“Or,” I said, marching to the far side of the mausoleum, then turning to come back the other way, “or her date hadn’t shown up yet, although…” I hurried over to where I’d left the file and flipped through the crime scene photos again, just to confirm something to myself. “I think he’d already been and gone. See? Look at how the sheets are tossed around. The bed’s definitely been used, and not for sleeping.”
“Really!” Lamar’s lips thinned. “Isn’t it bad enough the press trashed poor Vera’s reputation? Do you have to, too?”
“I have to find out the truth, remember?” I looked him in the eye. “You’re the one who asked me to get involved.”
“Yes, of course. It’s just that-”
“And what difference does Vera’s reputation make at this point? The girl’s been dead for more than twenty years.”
“Yes, she has, but-”
“And you can’t deny that she was at that motel for a little action. I mean, why else hang around in a place like that? In a city far from where she was likely to meet anybody she knew? That tells me she was screwing somebody who might have been recognized down near Central State.”
Lamar winced at my choice of words, but he didn’t argue. I mean, how could he?
“You also have to admit that any way you look at it, the whole thing’s a little kinky. Whoever the guy was, he must have been into young chicks. In that trashy outfit, she would have looked like a teenager.”
“You’re wrong. I know you’re wrong.” Lamar ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “There’s something we’re missing,” he said. “Something we’re not seeing. Let me have a look at that picture again. The close-up of Vera.”
I found the picture he wanted and held it up for him to see.
“What?” I asked, when his eyes narrowed just a bit. “What do you-”