“When did you decide to drop it?” Frank asked.
Little turned back toward him. “When I seen that girl’s picture in the paper. It said she was from that school, what you call it?”
“Northfield Academy.”
“That’s right,” Little said. “And in the glove compartment, well, they was this piece of paper that had the name of the school on it, and her name too.”
“The play program,” Frank said.
“Is that what it was?” Little asked. “I don’t know. I just left it in the glove compartment.” He turned to Caleb. “I knew the car was burning when I seen that paper.”
“So you took it to the cutters?” Caleb asked.
“Fast as I could drive, that’s for sure,” Little said. “I didn’t want to hang around nothing that girl had. She too hot.” He looked back at Frank. “And that’s the righteous truth.” He shook his head. “I ain’t never seen that girl.”
“You still living on Simpson Street, Davon?” Caleb asked.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t pull any deals in that house, you understand? You got little kids living there.”
Davon peered toward the soda can. “What you going to do ’bout that?”
Caleb lifted it toward him. “I’m going to toss it into the garbage, Davon, and let the narcs clean up their own house. But if I ever hear of a deal going down around those kids, I’ll come get you myself.”
Davon nodded vigorously. “Yeah, all right, man.”
Caleb shoved the can in his jacket pocket. “Don’t fuck with me, Davon.”
Frank took out one of his cards. “Call me if you hear anything about this girl,” he said.
Little took the card and gave it a peremptory glance. “Yeah, right, okay.” He shifted nervously on his feet. “So that’s it, then, right?”
“Just don’t leave the city without telling me,” Frank warned.
“Nah, I won’t go nowhere,” Davon assured him.
“And stay out of the zoo,” Caleb added. “Do your business in a parking lot somewhere.”
“I don’t like the zoo, noways,” Little said. “All them animals, it stinks like shit ’round here.” He walked a few feet away, then glanced back tentatively, as if half-expecting to be shot down where he stood.
For a few minutes, Frank and Caleb stood together outside the reptile house. The heat seemed to swirl around them, despite the motionless air.
“What do you think?” Caleb asked.
“I think we got the straight story,” Frank told him.
“Me too. He ain’t got the guts to kill a girl like Angelica.”
Frank drew out her picture and looked at it.
Caleb watched him closely for a moment. “You think about her a lot, don’t you?”
“Sometimes,” Frank said. He put the picture back in his jacket and glanced around the park. “Sometimes I get tired of talking to people like Little.”
“High society’s not much better, I bet,” Caleb said with a short laugh.
“I wasn’t really thinking of that.”
“Oh yeah,” Caleb said. “What were you thinking about?”
Frank shrugged wearily. “Nothing really,” he said, and realized that it was a lie. He had, in fact, been thinking about someone, and not for the first time. As if carried on a current, her image came unbidden, dark hair, dark eyes, with a curled rose still resting in her open hand.
14
There was a black Mercedes parked in the driveway of Karen Devereaux’s house when Frank arrived, and he found its presence there disquieting. It was too elegant, and its elegance was something against which he felt utterly powerless. He could not help but compare it to the battered, dusty frame of his old Chevrolet, the unwashed windows and plain blackwall tires. Parked beside it, the Mercedes shimmered brilliantly in the cascading sunlight. It was beautifully polished, and Frank immediately imagined its owner as equally sleek and stylish, a man in a black tuxedo and red cummerbund who knew one wine from another and smoked expensive European cigarettes.
Once at the door of the house, Frank hesitated. He did not want to intrude upon her, but he also felt himself powerfully drawn back to her. It was as if the line connecting them, the one he’d felt the night before, was sturdier than he had imagined, and that it was forever being tugged gently and insistently in some effort to bring him back.
The man who opened the door was exactly what Frank had expected. He was tall, blonde, and very handsome. He wore dark gray pants and a black velvet jacket, and looked to be in his middle thirties. He seemed at home in his surroundings, utterly natural in clothes that would have looked like a costume on almost anyone else. As Frank faced him silently, he felt his own disarray, the frazzled suit and rumpled hat, but he realized that he did not in the least feel shamed by them, and for an instant he felt a sudden, exhilarating pride in what he wore.
He pulled his badge from his coat and watched as the gold shield glinted in the light.
“I’m here to see Karen Devereaux,” he said.
“She’s upstairs,” the man answered quietly.
“Who are you?”
“My name is James Theodore. I’m Karen’s partner.”
“Partner?” Frank asked, as if he suspected that this was the sort of word that could easily mean something a great deal more.
“Yes, in the Nouveau Gallery,” Theodore explained. “It’s an art gallery downtown.” He stepped out of the door. “Please, come in.”
“I told Miss Devereaux that I would be back some time today,” Frank said as he walked into the house. He was annoyed with himself: How had he missed finding out about the art gallery? He took off his hat and twirled it in his fingers. “She should be expecting me.”
“I’m sure she is,” Theodore said. He closed the door and pressed his back up against it. He looked as if he were guarding a bank vault. “She mentioned you to me,” he said.
“Mentioned?”
“That you’d be coming by today,” Theodore added quickly. “I’m sure she’ll be right down.”
“Did you know Angelica very well?” Frank asked.
“Slightly.”
Frank pulled out his notebook. He could sense that Theodore was not just some upper-class playboy. He had an air of quiet authority, as if he knew he would be the same person even if the Mercedes suddenly evaporated, along with the velvet coat.
“So you’re sort of a friend of the family?” Frank asked tentatively.
“Well, there isn’t much of a family,” Theodore said mournfully. “I suppose you know what happened to Karen’s parents?”
“Yes.”
“So it was only the two of them,” Theodore added, “just Karen and Angelica.” He drew in a deep breath. “Now there’s just Karen.” He smiled sadly. “But that really doesn’t answer your last question, does it?”
“No.”
“Sorry.”
“How well did you know the family?”
“Not at all, as a family,” Theodore said. “And as for Angelica, not at all, really. My only relationship is with Karen.” He shrugged. “And to be entirely candid, I’m not really sure that I know her very well, either.”
“That sounds more like her sister,” Frank said.
“What does?”
“That no one seems to have known her very well.”
“Is that what you’re discovering?”
“Yes.”
Theodore looked at Frank curiously. “So you have to live their lives a bit, is that it? The lives of the victims, I mean?”
“In a way,” Frank said.
“Fascinating.”
“Not really,” Frank said. “It’s just that most people know the people who kill them. So, you have to find out about the people they knew.”
“Do you think Angelica was murdered?”
“Yes, I do.”