Kravitz rubbed at a few drops of rain on his suit jacket shoulder. “It never came up, did it?”
He had me there. “You should have told me.”
“We put someone on Emma because we don’t want her talking to other reporters. Now, what’s your explanation for not telling me about the murder? I want to know about this man and his connection to Christine O’Meara.”
“I thought your police friends already told you,” I said.
He pointed at me. “You are pissing me off. If you’d called me, I would have sent our own guy to the murder scene to tape. Now we can’t even examine local news footage, because going to any of your TV stations would tip them off that the infant bones and the Billings murder might be connected.”
“Listen, Paul. I don’t care whether you got to tape or not. And if you or one of your yokels like Louie put that thing on my car, don’t expect anything more from me.”
He took a deep breath, his stare never wavering from my face. “I did not put a GPS device on your car, and I specifically told my investigators to leave you alone. Since someone else is obviously on to your investigation, did it dawn on you that you led a killer straight to Billings?”
“Oh, yeah. It dawned on me.” I felt an unexpected burning behind my eyes and fought hard to avoid the tears. I succeeded.
But Kravitz saw. He was an experienced interviewer and could read the emotion in people’s faces. “Sorry. That was unfair.”
“No, it’s the truth. What do you want from me?” I asked.
“I want you tell me how you found Billings and what you learned about his connection to Christine O’Meara.”
“Like I said, sounds like you already got everything,” I said.
“Not exactly. I want your take, with every detail you can remember. We’re already doing a background check on this guy, but you were one of the last people to talk to him. It’s the details that make a good story, Abby. The telling details.”
23
I was watching from my office window when the Purity Maids minivan pulled into my driveway Tuesday morning. The van was turquoise, like their uniforms, and the logo on the vehicle was white with darker turquoise letters. I realized I’d seen vans like this in the neighborhood before, but they blended into the background, like so many other things that weren’t important at the time.
Last night, after I’d told Kravitz all those telling details he so desperately wanted, I’d spent the evening with Jeff and Doris. Jeff had made plenty of calls Monday and scheduled interviews with two home health care agencies today. When I left them to drive home, I felt a sudden sense of loss. Jeff and I had a comfortable routine that would have to change. Though I didn’t resent Doris, I realized we’d have to come up with new ways to spend time together. She was a part of our lives now. A new challenge-but maybe a reward, too.
The two women who’d gotten out of the van, one black, one white, dragged to my doorstep a vacuum, mops, and two plastic pails filled with cleaning supplies. I opened the door before they could ring the bell and welcomed them inside.
“I am thrilled you could do this on such short notice. I’m Abby, by the way.”
The older woman set down her vacuum and pail in the foyer and pulled a folded paper from her uniform pocket. “Ms. Rose, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Dolly, and this is Angela. You understand that ’cause this is a rush job your credit card’s already been charged in advance?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you.”
“One dirty house is the same as any other,” Dolly said. “Don’t make no difference to me. How many bathrooms you got?”
“A powder room down here and two upstairs.” I smiled at Angela, hoping she might be someone I could chat with, because Dolly was already wheeling her vacuum into my living room. From what I could tell, she was all business.
“Angela’s gonna do the upstairs, and I’ll-” Dolly stopped talking when Webster loped into the living room to greet my visitors. The woman’s stiff posture indicated that she wasn’t happy to see him. He sat patiently in front of her, waiting to be petted. I knew he wouldn’t get his wish. “I didn’t get no alert about animals. You got any more?”
“A cat. But they’re both really sweet and-”
“I don’t care if they got angel wings; you gotta put them up. And if they’ve made messes anywhere, we don’t touch animal waste.”
“I understand. I’ll put Webster in the utility room.” I turned to see if Angela felt the same way about pets, but she’d disappeared up the stairs. I didn’t blame her.
After I bribed Webster with a rawhide bone and closed him in, I decided to try to endear myself to Dolly one more time, hoping she’d open up, but she was muttering about cat hair as she unloaded her supplies onto my kitchen counter.
“The cat’s probably upstairs. I’ll have to find her,” I said as I passed her.
Once upstairs, I saw the guest bathroom rugs neatly folded in the hall and heard water running. I walked to the bathroom and leaned against the doorframe. “Hi.”
Angela was on her knees cleaning around the base of the commode. She returned my “Hi” and held up the canned bathroom cleaner. “You want me to use something different? We bring our own, but the customer can always-”
“No problem. I didn’t get to say hello to you down there. You been doing this long?”
She went back to spraying and wiping. “Couple years.”
“How many houses do you clean in a day?”
“Maybe five. Sometimes six if we have a few small places.”
“Sounds like a tough job,” I said.
Angela looked at me. “She’s gonna come up here and get on my case if you keep talking to me. You saw what she’s like.”
“Sorry, I always chatted with my former cleaning lady. But she wasn’t with a big agency like Purity. How many people work there?”
“About thirty.” She pulled a wand from her pail and attached a disposable toilet brush, then flushed the commode and began to scrub the bowl.
“You always work in pairs? Because I think that’s a good idea. You could-”
“Ma’am.” Angela sat back on her heels. “What do you want from me?”
“I’m a talker; that’s all.” She was wearing rubber gloves, so I couldn’t tell if she was married, but asking about kids might make her more talkative. “You have children?”
“Two.” She was back to scrubbing. “I don’t mind if you like to talk, but Dolly gets all over me if I don’t finish on time. You’re making that kinda hard.”
“Okay. I’ll leave you alone.” But I wasn’t about to quit without getting any useful information. I took a few steps toward my bedroom but came back and stuck my head in the door. “You look young to have two children. They must be little.”
This time Angela laughed and shook her head. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”
“You got me pegged. How old are they?”
Pretty soon I knew all about Angela. How her husband worked on an oil rig and was gone for months at a time, how some days she had to work as late as eight at night, even though she started at seven in the morning, but I mostly learned how much she loved her husband and kids and how every penny she made went into a savings account for the children-so they could go to college and not be cleaning houses when they were twenty-five.
By then, we’d moved through my bedroom and into the master bath. “Lots of women in the same boat at Purity?”
“Most are worse off. At least my husband’s got a steady job.”
“There was another cleaning woman recommended to me before you two were assigned. Her name was Loreen, I think. Is she worse off?”
“The only thing I know about Loreen is that she’s got some monster houses on her schedule. She’s been around a long time and makes more money.”