Shades of Grey (3 page)

‘Hey, babe, come with me. We’re all sitting over by the windows.’ The cooing increased, as he steered the blonde behind the pews and away from Dulcie. Her flock followed, hovering, and Dulcie found herself alone again. To top everything off, the black T-shirt was warmer than she’d remembered. She could feel sweat trickling down her back.

Tim’s parents, his mother veiled, passed by and paused. Surely, they remembered her from the day they had moved their son in, supervising as some freelance dorm crew members had carried up his trunk, suitcases, and the guitars with their amps that he never seemed to play. Dulcie nodded, and Tim’s father nodded back. His mother just turned away. It was the skirt, she was certain.

Everyone was taking a seat. Should she bolt? She wasn’t sure. The huddle of large boys – she recognized at least one of them, a burly dude called Chuck, as one of Tim’s B-school buddies – were looking her way. There was something wolflike about them – maybe it was all those big, perfect teeth – and she was acutely aware of being a woman alone. She looked down at her T-shirt, trying to pull at it so that it didn’t stick quite so closely to her ample curves.

That’s when she noticed the hair. About three inches long, silvery grey against the black cotton, it could only have come from one place, from one beloved pet. Had she not worn this shirt since Mr Grey had died? She plucked off the hair and smiled, twirling it in her fingers. She wasn’t alone, not really, and with that encouraging thought, Dulcie slid into the second-to-last pew, next to another lone female. Dulcie saw that her neighbor had had the sense to wear dark blue. In truth her outfit seemed to fit her no better than Dulcie’s. But while Dulcie’s overdyed black T was now clinging uncomfortably, this stranger’s jacket hung on her slim shoulders like a shower curtain. From the slight sheen, visible even in the dull church light, Dulcie figured it for polyester. It must have felt like hot plastic in this heat.

‘We must be the pew of fashion misfits,’ Dulcie muttered to herself, and thought of making a joke of it to her seatmate when she noticed the girl was crying. Although her dark hair hung over her face, Dulcie recognized the shaking of her shoulders as genuine, and when a small honk emerged from under an unfashionable cascade of curls, Dulcie passed her a tissue. The face that looked up was red and blotchy. ‘Thanks,’ the girl mouthed silently. Dulcie smiled and nodded. At least someone here seemed to be truly mourning the dead man.

Who was this crying girl? That quick glance under the hair had shown a face devoid of make-up, though that could have been the result of the tears. Taking in the ersatz clothes, the untamed hair, and the apparently real grief, Dulcie felt a kinship and decided to speak. But just then a white-haired gentleman who looked like TV’s perfect Dad from central casting began to talk, so Dulcie tucked her feet under the pew and tried to listen. When another couple of late arrivals, a heavy-set woman and a tall, skinny man, squeezed by to slide into the pew, she spared them a glance. They both nodded to Dulcie and turned to face the front. For a moment, she felt better. The woman’s suit was wool. It had to be scratchy and even Dulcie knew it was at least five years out of date. The man’s tie looked clean enough, but the neck it rode up on was already red. She wasn’t the worst-dressed person here, even if she looked awkward enough for these latecomers to feel comfortable taking seats right next to her.

The white-haired minister had begun to drone, and suddenly it hit her: there was a very good reason the odd couple were so poorly dressed, just as there was a very good reason why they had moved into her pew. Dulcie sat up straighter as a cold chill ran down her back. They were cops.

Was it just protocol that had drawn them here, or were they looking for her? A shudder ran through Dulcie as she thought back to the evening, four days ago now, when she had found Tim. ‘We might want to talk again,’ one young cop had told her. He’d given her his card, too, ‘in case you remember anything.’ What else was there to remember? She’d come home, Tim had been . . . well, no sense in going over that again.

Speaking of which, where was the body? Dulcie hadn’t been to many funerals, but shouldn’t there be a casket somewhere? She looked around, trying not to be too obvious. No, there was no casket. Perhaps it would have been considered gauche. No matter, Tim’s death had been real enough for her. She closed her eyes for a moment as that weird dizziness hit her again, and when she reopened them, everyone around her was standing. Dulcie scrambled to her feet. Was the service over? No, they were all muttering some sort of prayer. For a moment, Dulcie’s mind flashed back to the commune. Lucy never stuck with any one religion for long, but Dulcie had been to her share of prayer meetings and Wiccan circles. Her mother had even, for a while, gone regularly to a sky-clad outdoor service that Dulcie, then eleven and extremely self-conscious, had refused point-blank to return to, once she realized that all of her mom’s friends would happily strip as soon as they entered their sacred grove. At any rate, her mother’s spiritual quests had taught Dulcie how to blend in, and now she dutifully bent her head.

‘We commend you. Amen.’ Ten minutes later, the silver-topped speaker seemed to be done, and Dulcie looked around. No, nobody was kissing anyone else, but that seemed to be it. The two cops shuffled past her, and Dulcie looked to stall a moment.

‘Hi, I’m Dulcie.’ She turned to the curly-haired girl to her left. The eyes that looked up at her were a striking green, set against light-brown skin. The girl was stunning; exotic-looking, but with a wide-eyed innocence. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes, I am. Thank you.’ A slight accent, nothing Dulcie could place, gave a sing-song lilt to her words. ‘I just – I hate these things.’

‘Me, too.’ Dulcie smiled, despite the setting, and when the girl smiled back, Dulcie was struck again by her beauty – and her age. She couldn’t be more than sixteen. But when she stood up, Dulcie found herself facing a body like a porn star’s. OK, maybe she was eighteen. And after a moment of staring, Dulcie got up too, turning sideways to exit the pew.

The mismatched pair of latecomers were standing by the aisle, and she stepped past them.

‘Miss Estrella? Luisa Estrella?’ Dulcie looked back and saw that the duo had stopped the buxom girl.

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘We have some questions for you, Miss Estrella.’ The large woman reached to take the girl’s arm. ‘Would you accompany us out to our car, please?’

‘But she’s the only one who’s crying.’ The phrase formed on Dulcie’s lips, but she let it drop. What did she know? Instead, she stepped back and let the cops escort the curly-haired beauty out of the chapel. Around her, the buzz grew louder, and she glanced toward the front of the chapel. Everyone was looking at the doors, where the young woman was framed between the two larger cops as they disappeared into the sun. Some of the men frankly leered. Alana, dry-eyed and still perfectly composed, was among the watchers. Dulcie couldn’t be sure, but she thought that the girlfriend’s beautiful face looked ugly for a moment, frozen in a stare of pure hate.

Four

Dulcie hadn’t drunk at all after the funeral; hadn’t been invited back to wherever the Worthington clan had gathered, and hadn’t regretted the opportunity to socialize further with his family, if truth be told. Still, she felt hung-over when the doorbell rang early the next morning. Part of that was lack of sleep. She’d stayed up late, reading; returning to a blighted castle in Umbria where a distraught heroine was holding out under siege. The nightmares hadn’t helped either. No matter how often she told herself that this was
her
apartment,
her
home, she couldn’t shake off the dreadful knowledge that someone had died here, violently.

Damn Tim! He was a worse room-mate in death than he’d been in life. Why couldn’t Suze be here? Thoughts of her old friend had comforted her, and at around three a.m. she had been able to settle down a little, making herself a cup of sugar-free cocoa, using the mugs she and Suze had discovered together at a yard sale. Then fatigue had finally kicked in, and she had found herself thinking of her other former room-mate, the grey cat she had so loved. Maybe it was silly to imagine that she had seen him; that he had warned her to be careful. Maybe it was worse – crazy, unhinged – but she liked thinking of him, of his wise green eyes and warm presence. Maybe she had seen him, just maybe . . .

Rousing herself from a dream in which Mr Grey had been curled, purring, on the end of her bed, Dulcie grabbed her threadbare chenille robe and looked around for her slippers. The doorbell rang again, and she gave up.

‘Coming!’ she yelled, and took her time descending the stairs from her bedroom and then from the apartment’s main floor back down to the front door. Who would come by first thing on a Sunday?

A peek through the door’s peephole showed Tim’s square block of a face, complete with tow-blond head.

Drawing in a quick breath, she opened the door before her brain had fully engaged.

‘Oh, hi. You must be Dulcie?’ Face to face, the man on her doorstep was taller and slimmer than Tim, his hair a little lighter and a little longer. But in her half-asleep state, the resemblance was still close enough to be unnerving. She tucked her robe a little tighter around herself and blinked up at him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m Luke, Tim’s brother.’

She nodded, still not understanding, and stepped back to let the tall stranger in. Between the cops, the funeral director’s staff, and various concerned (or nosy) neighbors, she was getting used to this.

‘I didn’t get in until late last night, so for penance Mater and Pater sent me to clean out Tim’s apartment.’

‘Upstairs, two floors. His room is above the kitchen. The room that was his, I mean . . .’ Dulcie left the door open and climbed back up the stairs, the new carpet feeling thick and spongy under her bare feet. Luke followed behind her. ‘Up one more. On the right.’ Without turning, she pointed to the remaining stairs, then realized how brusque she sounded. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘I’d love some, thanks.’ He stood there, looking awkward, dirty-blond bangs falling into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry to barge in. My folks had a hell of a time reaching me, and then both my flights were delayed. That’s why I missed the funeral. The family seem to think it was a lapse of manners on my part.’

Dulcie counted out an extra two spoons of dark roast and started the machine. ‘Where did you fly in from?’

‘Jakarta, by way of Palo Alto. I’m finishing up at Stanford Law.’

‘My room-mate almost went there.’ She paused. The lack of caffeine was definitely affecting her. ‘I mean, my permanent room-mate – and Stanford. She’s doing an internship in DC this summer, so Tim . . .’

‘Yeah, I know. He was supposed to be studying for some make-up exams. They’d asked me to keep an eye on him. I was scheduled to take a seminar here next month anyway, and I gather there was some doubt about whether he’d be going back to the B-school at all. He was on academic probation at Christmas, so by spring – well, I don’t even know if he was officially enrolled anymore.’

Dulcie rummaged for mugs. All of this was news, though she wasn’t too surprised to learn of Tim slacking off. As she poured, she looked up at her room-mate’s big brother. ‘So, one in business, one in law? Is this a family thing?’

Luke had the grace to smile. It was a nice smile, crinkling up his face in a friendly way. ‘Looks that way, right? Prepping to run the foundation? Actually, I took three years off.’ He waved off the milk carton. ‘I bummed around Asia for a year, then finally ended up working for a social action group in Indonesia. I go back and help out when I can. They made me realize that international law would be right for me. Give me the tools I’d need to get things done.’ Dulcie nodded. This was how Suze talked. ‘Plus, I’d run out of money.’

‘Oh?’ She hadn’t meant to sound quite so skeptical. It had just popped out.

‘I know, with my family . . .’ Luke chuckled. ‘But they keep us kids on a tight leash.’ He saw her look. ‘Well, moderately tight. I know they’d pretty near cut Tim off.’

Dulcie swallowed, hard. ‘I hope they don’t want his security deposit back. I mean, he’d committed through August.’

Luke waved her fears away. ‘Don’t worry about it. I mean, I won’t mention it, and Mater and Pater aren’t thinking that way. They don’t want to think about Tim anymore than they must.’

That sounded harsh. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Dulcie. ‘It must be hard for them.’

Luke shrugged. ‘They don’t like mess. I mean, have they even been over here?’

‘Not since Tim moved in.’ Dulcie thought back. ‘They had someone from the funeral home come by to pick up a couple of suits.’

‘Tim in a suit.’ Luke was smiling more softly now, a wistful look on his face. ‘That poor little screw-up.’

Dulcie didn’t know what to say to that and, instead, reached for the coffee pot. But Luke put his empty mug on the counter. ‘Thanks, anyway. I should get started.’

‘OK, come on up.’ Abandoning her own half-finished mug, she led Luke up the stairs and opened Tim’s door. Clothes were everywhere, CDs and a few books joined them on the floor. ‘I’m sorry, the cops have been through here.’ In truth, it looked neater than Dulcie remembered.

‘Don’t worry about it. I grew up with him, you know?’

She nodded. ‘Hey, have you heard anything?’ She’d been so out of it, she didn’t remember if anyone at the funeral had said anything about . . . resolution. The word ‘murder’ still made her pause. ‘Was it, you know, random? Did someone follow him in from the street?’ She could still picture the open front door. He’d probably not even made it up to his own room.

‘Nothing. I know they’ve been talking to a lot of his friends, though.’

‘Right.’ Dulcie hugged her robe closer. ‘Hey, did you know this one girl, Luisa? She was at the funeral.’ She was the only person there who seemed really upset, Dulcie didn’t add. Luke looked puzzled. ‘Dark hair? Really pretty?’

‘Friend of the blonde’s, what’s-her-name? Alana?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ He must be thinking of the sneering brunette. She was a looker, too; dark, in contrast to the blonde Alana, but still with that perfect smile. Whereas, Dulcie suddenly realized, she herself had brushed neither teeth nor hair. ‘Um, would you excuse me?’