Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (26 page)

I order a bourbon and Coke, not caring it will be the house brand. For some reason, cheaper bourbon mixes the best or maybe just seems the sweetest, which apparently is all I require in the way of taste.

“Why get fancy?” the older of the two presumptive teachers asks when she hears my order. She gives me a smile that says she isn’t saving the seat for anybody.

Why indeed, I think, giving her the once-over. No ring (this could be girls’ night out), frosted short hair;

she is wearing a long-sleeved green turtleneck and dress jeans. Either she went home to change or is the play ground supervisor. Yet maybe teachers dress more casually these days.

“No sense trying to fool anybody, is there?” I respond, pleased I don’t have to think of something clever to break the ice. Her younger partner is prettier, but given her lock jawed expression, she won’t be running for president of my fan club any time soon.

For the next thirty minutes I compete head to head with Lockjaw for her friend’s attention (Jennifer spelled with a “J,” she says with a practiced smirk, no doubt having used that line more than once but still getting a grin out of me she has no idea how easy-to-please I am tonight). Finally Lockjaw gives up and calls it a night, pissed, but obviously not for the first time. Men spoil everything, her parting glance says. If I had known, I would have brought a friend. Preferably some body with rabies.

Jennifer, who turns out to be an accountant for a wholesale food club, and I seat ourselves at a table and share some nachos and cheese dip while we trade selected poignant vignettes from our pasts. She donated one of her kidneys to a twin sister who died from cancer anyway; I tell her about Rosa. Realizing she has topped me (I would have been glad to donate a breast), she lets me talk, which is progressively easier to do as the bourbon slides down. I tell her about a former divorce client who served her husband rat muffins for breakfast; on the dance floor I regale her with the continuing saga of Jason and his spiritual development classes. Steadily drinking dos Equis (our table is beginning to resemble a missile silo with multiple warheads), she laughs appreciatively.

In my arms, slow-dancing to “Bridge over Troubled Water,” Jennifer feels nice, her body warm and as user friendly as buttered toast. I used to be pretty good at this once. I am almost six feet tall, with only a slight paunch, and most days I can look myself in the mirror without wincing until I put in my contacts. Then I can see the warts. True, the bald spot on the back of my head looks, according to Dan, like spreading tree blight (what are friends for?), but Jennifer, with her slightly pug nose and weak chin, doesn’t appear on the verge of launching a campaign for mrs. America. Actually, compared to what else is out on the dance floor we stack up fairly well. The hard-body competition is agreeably thin, if you throw out a couple of women who could be hookers judging by their makeup and out-of-season sundresses that reveal more than repair work. Jennifer’s body, pressed against mine, is, if not overly firm, not of the Jell-0 variety either. Up close and personal, she looks around my age. Staying away, for once, from the subject of Sarah (usually, by this time I have whipped out my wallet and showed off her senior class picture), I work into the conversation that I have never been through a divorce, a fact that surely must be alluring to a single female patron of Kings & Queens.

“I’ve never been married,” Jennifer says, as we leave the dance floor hand in hand to return to our drinks.

I look down at her, amazed by this disclosure, feeling in some vague way she has again topped me.

“Imagine,” I say, bumping her slightly, “two middleaged adults without a single child-support check to show for it.” We sit down and drink.

“How come?” I ask, drunk enough to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong. We’re not exactly at the point where we exchange life stories.

“Doubtless, you’ve had plenty of chances.”

She smiles a little more brightly than necessary.

“It’s not that I don’t enjoy men, but I guess I’ve never liked the odds.”

Enjoy. I smile, too, pleased at my good fortune. I want to go to bed with this woman, but I’m not in the mood to listen to any bitter stories. Around nine, after we’ve danced again, I ask, “Would you like to come to my place?”

Obviously considering, she waits until we are back at our table to speak. She reaches down and finishes off the last of her beer. I should have ordered a six-pack and a bucket of ice.

“Thank you, but you seem a little too sad, Gideon. I appreciate the offer though.” After picking up her purse, she reaches up and lightly kisses me on the cheek and then slips away, leaving me to find our waiter to pay the bill.

Me, sad? I thought I had been witty and charming. I drive home in an alcoholic daze, on the lookout for cops. All I need to cap this perfect day is a ticket.

Damn.

At home the only thing on the machine is an incomprehensible message from Pearl Norman. Skunked worse than I am, she is saying something about “trying ever since Leigh was ten …” to do something. Most of it is her crying into the phone. I run the tape twice, and then erase it to get away from the sound of her voice.

Her self-pitying whine reminds me of my father’s voice when he was on the sauce. Jesus Christ. An alcoholic and a schizophrenic. No wonder my mother shipped him off to the state hospital. I felt terrible I never went to see him, but I was glad he was gone. Embarrassed the shit out of us sometimes. The asshole!

“Drunk and crazy, drunk and crazy,” Marty would hiss under her breath at him at the dinner table. I’d sit there scared to death he’d understand, while mother tried to act as if nothing was wrong. Glad those times are past. In the den on the sofa I sit as still as I can to make the room stop spinning. Woogie hops up beside me to wait for Sarah. Good boy. No wonder Leigh and Shane try to hide Pearl. I would, too.

I awake to my doorbell ringing at four in the morning.

Though my head is pounding and my stomach quivering with last night’s liquor, I am relieved. Knowing it is Sarah, I get up and stumble to the door in my under wear. Brave watchdog that he is, Woogie follows me, barking deliriously. Thank God I didn’t bring what’sher-face home with me. For the life of me, I can’t re member her name. I haven’t drunk that much in years.

So what if Sarah has come home out of guilt? What’s wrong with that? How can we be moral without feeling bad when we screw up? I can feel myself smiling, understanding how the father of the prodigal son felt. I won’t say a word just tell her I’m glad she’s home. If she wants to rant and rave a little, I’ll endure it. For a while.

I flip the porch-light switch by the door and open it to find Leigh Wallace. What the hell is going on? I jump behind the door. In these thin boxer shorts I might as well be standing in the nude. I yell, “Come on in.

I’m going to get some clothes on.” Why in the world didn’t she at least call? Don’t people think I own a telephone?

“I’m sorry about this,” she calls after me, “but I couldn’t stay at my parents’ home any longer.”

It is chilly in the house. I flip on some lights and hit the thermostat. I’ll make coffee when I get some clothes on. When I reappear, dressed in jeans and a sweater, I find her in my kitchen by the pantry, presumably looking for coffee.

“I hope I haven’t awakened your daughter,” she says, staring at me as if I were a ghost. Well, she doesn’t look so great either. Swallowed by shapeless gray sweats and tennis shoes, she seems smaller than I remembered. Her face, devoid of makeup and lipstick, is a little unnerving in its austerity. I have never seen her when she didn’t look perfect.

“She spent the night out,” I say, unable to summon the energy to explain. My mind isn’t quite functioning yet. I find a jar of Taster’s Choice and fill a pan with water.

“Why don’t you have a seat?”

She goes to the kitchen table and sits, apparently convinced I can boil water without her assistance. How odd this is, I think. I wonder if her father knows she is gone.

Our daughters are both in trouble, though Sarah obviously doesn’t think of it like that. Woogie goes to Leigh and jumps up against her legs. A substitute sister. Acceptance is his long suit. Smiling, she reaches down and pets him as if he were some magnificent breed of animal.

“I haven’t been telling you the truth.”

Better late than never, I think. With only five days until the trial starts, it’s nice to think I might know what the hell is going on. Aware that I stink worse than the bottom of a trash can filled with whiskey bottles and cigarette butts, I putter around the sink. If I get too close, she may pass out from the fumes. Woogie smells better than I do.

“So what is the truth?” I ask, prompting her when she doesn’t speak. This is a strange place and time for a murder confession, but maybe not so un usual in this case. Confessing to her father may be just too difficult. I can’t imagine Sarah confessing to me.

Tears begin to slide down her face.

“I wasn’t up at the church in the middle of the morning like I said,” she says, sniffling, and dabs at her eyes with a wadded-up tissue she is holding in her right fist. Woogie nestles against her feet as if he can sense her distress.

Tell me something I don’t know, I think. Still, she has got to start somewhere. My hand is trembling from too much alcohol as I measure out a teaspoon.

“Want some Coffee-mate and/or sugar?” I ask, trying to appear relaxed Finally getting to the bottom of this case has speeded up my heart. After last night, I need all the jump-starts I can get.

She shakes her head and again bends down to pet Woogie. What would we do without animals to comfort us? I pour boiling water from the pan and deliver her coffee to her and then cross back to the sink to pour my own. A little of me goes a long way this morning.

When she doesn’t speak, I prompt her, “As you may realize this isn’t much of a surprise.”

She sips at her coffee and makes a face. Probably too strong. Well, too bad. I would have met her at an I-Hop if she wanted.

“Do you remember asking me if I had been doing something I was embarrassed about?”

I nod, tasting my coffee. God, this stuff could power a tractor-trailer rig.

“Yeah,” I say, as offhandedly as I can. This will be hard enough for her to admit without me starting to pant in front of her.

“The morning of his death. Art had persuaded me to make a video,” she says bitterly, “without any clothes on.” She studies her mug. It is one of those mugs they send you for pledging money to Public Radio. Embarrassed for her, I look away and sip my coffee. She fills the growing silence.

“He said he wanted me to dance for him.” With these words she begins to cry, but it is controlled, as if she has promised herself to get it over with as quickly as possible.

I wait as long as I can to see if she will reveal more without my having to humiliate her by asking questions.

The things women do for men! I think of the performance of those female impersonators. True, they were paid, but I had the impression they would have danced for nothing.

“You must have loved him a lot to do that for him,” I say, coaxing her to continue.

Fiercely, she says, “You have no idea! I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

Woogie, now her protector, glances up from her feet at me as if to say that I should not even look as if I intend to hurt this woman. I have no desire to add to her already considerable distress, but my job is to represent her, not act as her therapist.

“It must have taken a lot of trust,” I sympathize. Art must have been quite the salesman.

As wretched as I feel, I notice I am becoming slightly horny. She must have looked magnificent. What was Art going to do with it? If he had no qualms about serving as a middleman, did he intend to market his own wife’s private video? Surely not. Yet people have done worse things. If Leigh killed him over this, a jury might be understanding. Talk about justifiable homicide.

Leigh wipes her eyes.

“When we first got married, I was so repressed that I wouldn’t let him see me naked.

We made love in the dark for the first month.”

God only knows the guilt she must be feeling. I sip my coffee. It doesn’t seem so strong anymore. No knowing what Shane had told his daughters about the human body. For two thousand years preachers have said that lust is evil. With my experience so far, a good case can be made in their favor. What a battle was being waged! Did Shane, I wonder, have any idea?

“You must have had a pretty strict upbringing.”

Leigh smiles wanly.

“My sisters had it worse.” Her own coffee is untouched. Caffeine is probably the last thing she needs.

“They never even saw a PG movie until they turned eighteen. By the time I was their age, I had seen a couple. But I never was allowed to watch MTV until I was married, and the first time I saw it I was terribly embarrassed.”

I try to imagine the journey she has made since she met Art her last semester in college. Her sisters re belled, so why shouldn’t she? How difficult it must be to try to keep your child from being exposed to lust in an age when toothpaste and sex are marketed together.

I think of that ad with the woman running her tongue back and forth over her teeth. Umnumn, good. So much for “Brusha, brusha, brusha. New Ipana toothpaste.” To make sure I understand, I ask, “Was it Art who filmed you?”

Leigh, even now, blushes.

“I wouldn’t have let some body else do it. What I wanted to tell you is that the film disappeared during the time I went back up to the church and then came home and discovered Art’s body.

I looked for it, but I couldn’t find it.”

Her voice has taken on a slightly hesitant tone as if she is doubtful I will believe her. I don’t know what to believe. The implication is that Art’s killer has the tape.

But how could he or she know Leigh had performed a nude dance on tape unless he or she was there? I doubt if the windows were open while this was going on.

“Art could have moved the tape after you left, which means it might still be in the house and the police never found it.”

She nods.