Tony nodded. That was exactly what he’d said. Ray was testing his resourcefulness. He wanted to see how he would solve the problem. Well, Tony thought, I guess I’d just better go solve this problem.
“Anyone want to join me on a stakeout?”
That got a laugh.
Roxie Kennebrew was a mess. There was no other way to describe it, Ray thought, looking at her. Her red hair was barely combed. Her makeup was smudged, what was left of it. She looked to have been crying for days. Her eyes were tortured, the lids rubbed pink by a hundred tissues. There were the last traces of lipstick at the corners of her wide mouth. She hadn’t seen a tub or shower in a while, he could tell. Ray decided that Roxie Kennebrew was either despondent over the death of her friend or a very good actress.
Ray steeled himself for this chat. Even though he was inclined to feel some sympathy for her he was tired of the lack of progress. Deanna the good mother. Deanna the volunteer. Deanna the dutiful wife. There was something Deanna had done that had driven someone to murder. If Roxie Kennebrew was truly devastated maybe she’d open up, talk about the group dynamics of the ‘Go Girls’, let something out, let something slip. If she was acting, Ray was sure he’d be able to tell.
Carol pointed out the two empty brandy bottles in the trash. Ray considered that the woman was drowning her sorrows, self-medicating, drinking to make the pain of loss go away. He knew that never worked, that all the drinking would do was sharpen the edge of self pity so it could cut a little deeper. He’d had some experience with that. He also considered that she might be drinking away her loathing for the evil deed she’d done.
Then, too, he remembered that more than one of her friends had commented that she was a drinker, that she…what was it…liked to let loose? Maybe it was as simple as that. Maybe she was just a drunk. Whatever the case, Ray was still a little gritty from the interview with Allyson Couts. Too bad, Roxie, he said to himself. Ray Bankston doesn’t suffer drunks.
“Tell me about your Monday morning, Mrs. Kennebrew.” It was a command, not a request.
“Monday morning.” Roxie looked down at the table. She had both hands wrapped around a coffee mug and stared at it with bleary detachment. “Nothing really. I, uh, went to the gym about 9:30. Then I called Dee’s house, I think about noon. Yeah. Noonish.”
Carol nodded. There had been a message on the Fredrickson’s answering machine.
“Earlier?”
“Ken. Ken had already gone to work. I got up about 7:30. Made some coffee. Read the paper. You don’t think I killed Dee…you can’t!” That brought a fresh wave of tears; deep, heaving sobs. An already sodden tissue was reduced to pulp and shards. Carol spied a box on the counter and fetched it for her.
“So no one can verify where you were or what you were doing early Monday.” Carol tried to signal Ray with her eyes that he was pressing too hard. After another minute of crying, softer this time, she sat up straight, sniffed loudly and glared at Ray.
“I want my lawyer here if you’re going to accuse me of killing Dee.”
Carol shrugged as if to say to Ray ‘I told you so’.
“That’s certainly your right. I’m not accusing you of anything though, not at all. Your friend was murdered very early Monday morning. We’re trying to place everyone who knew her, everyone she was connected with.” Roxie eyed Ray warily.
He thought he could smell liquor and wondered if she might have fortified her coffee.
“I told you where I was and what I did. I didn’t see anyone until I got to the gym. Gold’s, over on County Road E.”
“All right. We’ll let that go for now. Tell me, do you think Mr. or Mrs. Fredrickson could have been having an affair? Either of them?”
Ray hoped to slide past her request for a lawyer by ignoring it. They were still groping for a motive. When she answered he knew he’d pulled it off.
“No way in hell. Dee doesn’t fool around and neither does Scott. I’d know.”
“Can I ask how? How would you know?” Ray sat back, waiting for another chapter of Snow White.
“Because Scott knows he has an open invitation any time he wants some, for one thing.” Ray took a look at Roxie Kennebrew again. Beneath the tired eyes, streaked makeup and shapeless housecoat she was another very attractive member of the ‘Go Girls’. He could imagine Scott Fredrickson being tempted, at least, by her looks and the figure she was hiding behind the terrycloth.
“But he never, ah…took you up on the offer?”
“Never. Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”
Ah, but it is, Ray said to himself, keeping his face neutral.
“And Dee…I’d just know. We didn’t have any secrets.” Ray hesitated with the comeback he wanted to use. It would just piss her off.
She surprised him when she confronted it head on. “She even knew I wanted to screw her husband. We laughed about it. That’s how I know, detective.”
“That’s pretty telling.” Ray wondered if it was the truth.
“It’s the new millennium. We’re all adults. And we’re really good friends. Why keep secrets?”
Why indeed, Ray thought. But someone’s got a secret and it’s important enough to kill for. And it’s someone you probably know, he wanted to tell her.
“Okay, no secrets. Tell me what it was really like on the trips you all took. What happened in Vegas? What happened in Mexico and LA?” Roxie shook her head. She still had the same sad serious look on her face when she answered him.
“You’re not one of my friends. You’re not one of us. Not one of the girls.” She gave a short bark of a laugh. “Not one of the husbands, either. You, we can keep secrets from. I can anyway.”
“Why would you want to?”
“That’s obvious isn’t it?”
“Not really. One member of your little clique is dead. Murdered. I would think you’d want to share anything that might help us find out who killed Deanna Fredrickson. She knew the killer. She let the killer into the house. She knew her killer.”
Ray hadn’t raised his voice at all. He’d spoken in precise measured tones, stating facts, facts that he normally wouldn’t share with a potential suspect.
Roxie froze when he said that. She looked directly into his eyes, not moving. It had hit a nerve-paralyzed her. Ray could barely make out that she was breathing she was so still. He thought he could see her thinking, could see images passing behind her red eyes, questioning, wondering who Deanna knew that could have killed her. He saw fear there. Roxie was wondering if she knew the killer too, he was certain of it. The only sound that intruded was a clock ticking somewhere in the house.
“Nothing.” Roxie sighed heavily, a deep cleansing breath. “We never fought. There could be a little…cattiness, I guess you’d call it, but it was always in fun. It was never serious.”
“It might not have been on the surface.”
Roxie went into another trance, looking deeper, thinking harder whether any of her friends could even be capable of such hatred, because, she reasoned, only hatred could make you kill someone you cared for, someone you loved.
“We never fought,” she said again, still sifting through memories, through conversations and teasing, through taunts and jokes and a thousand things they’d said to each other. Ray remembered Erika’s story about the strip club in LA.
“You fought in LA, at the strip joint.”
Roxie’s brow furrowed. “Who told you about that?” Her tone wasn’t accusatory. She seemed merely curious to Ray.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m just wondering if there could be any hard feelings.”
“From who? I got smashed and Karen and I were acting like jerks. We teased Erika. We probably pushed it too far. I can’t remember all of it.”
She paused to collect her thoughts, dig into the memory of it. “Dee hustled us all out of there. I remember that. Karen was kind of wired that night. It was a bad idea to go there. We all agreed on that later, at the bar. We laughed about it.”