Rho laughed — not much, but still it felt good. After a long, draining day filled with loss and grief, it was a relief to talk about something as mundane as a dog who got testy when denied his rations.
Behind her Wayne said, “That’s right, Swift, laugh, why don’t you? Your star’s on the rise. Maybe you’ll get a promotion.”
She swung around, ready to blister him with a reply, but he slammed out the door.
Guy noticed Lily Gilardi as he was leaving the market, where he’d gone to buy another disposable point-and-shoot camera. The young woman was walking north on the shoulder of the highway, her head bent, long dark hair blowing in the wind. He hurried to his car, pulled out of the lot, and drove up beside her. When he opened the passenger-side door and called her name she started.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Newberry.”
“It’s me. Need a ride?”
Lily looked longingly at the car, but indecision clouded her eyes. “I don’t know—”
“Come on. I’ll buy you a drink, something to eat, if you like.”
“...Thanks. I could use a drink. But not at the hotel, okay? Alex hangs there, and I don’t want to see him.”
“We’ll go to the Oceanside, then.”
She got in, sweeping her thick dark hair across her left cheek, but not before Guy caught sight of a fresh bruise. He didn’t comment, simply pulled away from the shoulder.
Lily said, “I heard about Mrs. Scurlock.”
“Oh? How?” Rhoda had told him the sheriff’s department was releasing no information tonight, in hope of preventing another out-of-control public reaction.
“Wayne’s wife, Janie. I went to see her, and she told me about it. Said you were there when Rhoda Swift discovered the body.”
“Yes, I was. Have you told anybody?”
“No. Janie said not to. Was it... awful?”
“It wasn’t pleasant. Will Scurlock’s in bad shape.”
“Poor Will. He really loved her, in spite of her problems.”
“How’d you know that?”
“You can tell when people’re really in love.” Lily’s face was mournful. Nobody would ever make that claim about Alex and her, and she knew it.
Guy pulled into the lot at the Oceanside and followed Lily through the dining room and into the bar. She chose a booth over which a fishnet loaded with glass bobbers was suspended. A large stuffed fish trophy — some kind of long-nosed shark — glowered down from the wall.
After the waitress had taken their order Lily said, “You still want to ask me questions about those murders? I told you I was just a kid then.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want anything? That I might enjoy your company?”
She laughed cynically. “A guy who can take Rhoda Swift to dinner doesn’t need to hang with the likes of me.”
“And what are those ‘likes’?”
“See for yourself.” She brushed her hair back, exposing the damaged cheek. “I’m just your basic small-town slut.”
“Alex tell you that?”
“Yeah, right before he hit me.”
“Just because he likes to hit women doesn’t mean it’s your fault.”
“That’s what they tell you, but try believing it.” She pushed up the sleeve of her sweater, began fiddling with her watchband, and Guy saw another bruise on her arm. A bruise curiously at odds with the beautiful gold links that fitted loosely around her thin wrist.
“Why do you stay with him, Lily?”
“I’m in too deep not to. Besides, I got no place to go.”
“You said you went to see Janie before. Couldn’t you stay with her and Wayne?”
“God, no! I went to see Janie because she’d understand what I’m going through. Wayne’s always beating on her too.”
“Then maybe she needs to get out. You two could go in together on a place—”
“Look, if the price of this drink is listening to you tell me how to run my life, I don’t need it!” She started to slide out of the booth.
Guy put his hand on her arm. “I’m trying to be a friend. No more advice unless you ask for it. That’s a promise.”
“Okay, then.”
They drank in silence, and after a while Lily said, “Mrs. Scurlock — was it an accident?”
“Possibly.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean it might’ve been suicide? Or... murder?”
“The sheriff’s people won’t know till they get the autopsy results.”
Lily shuddered and finished her drink. “D’you think it had something to do with that other woman who was killed?”
“Possibly,” he said again.
“Oh God.”
“What, Lily?”
Silence.
“If you know something about that — and you indicated last night that you do — you should tell the sheriff’s people.”
“I thought you said no advice.”
“I’m sorry. But couldn’t you at least tell your brother?”
“Tell Wayne?”
“A relative—”
“Jesus, you don’t understand a thing, do you? Wayne’s a maniac. He scares me to death, even worse than Alex. If I told him what I know, he’d figure out for sure what we’re into. And then he’d kill Alex. Maybe both of us.”
Rho waved to Ridley Bodine, night-shift bartender at the hotel, and he came down to meet her at the plank. “You working yesterday when Virge Scurlock was in?” she asked.
The heavyset, bearded man nodded. “The other guy and I alternate football Sundays.”
“Did Virge say anything to indicate why she was drinking so heavily?”
“She still missing?”
So the department’s lid on the news was holding. “Yeah.”
“Too bad. Well, let me think... After her third stinger I suggested she might want to go easy. She said she was trying to make a decision and she made decisions better when she’d had a few. When I warned her not to drive in her condition she told me it wasn’t a problem, since Will was using her truck and would pick her up later. So I served her a couple more drinks and then he came and fetched her.”
“She talk with anybody else while she was here?”
Ridley looked thoughtful, stroking his beard. “Mimi Griggs and her boyfriend from Santa Carla — I can never remember his name — were at the next table, and they may have talked. Otherwise I don’t remember. Was too busy serving drinks and watching the ’Niners get the shit kicked outta them.”
Mimi. Rho felt a tightening in her gut. “Thanks, Ridley.”
She started for the door, but the bartender said, “You want to talk with Mimi, she’s back by the jukebox with her boyfriend from Calvert’s Landing.”
Ridley was aware of the history between Rho and Mimi and, she suspected, waiting for a reaction. She shrugged and smiled. “Hardly seems fair, does it? She’s cornered the market on all the eligible men in the county.”
She made her way to the table where Mimi, the town insurance agent, sat with a tanned, blond-haired man who spent most of his time surfing near the Calvert’s Landing Pier. Mimi, a willowy brunette whose birthday was only two days before Rho’s, looked up in surprise at her approach. She said something to her date, and he got up and carried their empty glasses to the bar.
“So what’s happening, Rho?”
“I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course. Sit down.” She motioned at the other chair.
Rho sat, trying to conceal her unease. Nine years ago her former husband, Zach, had numbered among Mimi’s conquests, and her old friend’s betrayal had carved an unbridgeable chasm between them.
Mimi leaned toward her and said in a low voice, “This about Virge Scurlock?”