I Love You More: A Novel (7 page)

What if someone saw?

I never did finish that sand castle. Mama and I packed up and left Cooper’s Island that very afternoon. Detective Jones offered to get somebody to drive us home being that Mama was upset and had taken one of Daddy’s pills, but she said she didn’t want to wait, that it had been several hours already, definitely long enough for the medicine to wear off, and she’d be fine. I kept expecting the police to say something else to Mama, like “Don’t leave town” for instance, or some other TV-crime-show-type warning, but they never did. It was like she wasn’t even a suspect, which meant, as far as I could tell, that they’d believed Mama’s and my answers. I remember feeling relieved about that, like I’d cheated on a math test and gotten away with it.

Mama and I didn’t talk much on the way home, which, like I said, wasn’t unusual, but she didn’t even turn on the radio, or the air conditioner for that matter. I noticed how quiet it was first, quieter than an empty house, and then I started getting hot, and before long I was sweating so bad my thighs were sliding around on the leather seat.

“Do you mind if I open my window,” I finally asked.

Without taking her eyes off the road (Mama never takes her eyes off the road when she’s driving), she reached over and turned
on the air conditioner. Then she started crying. Not loud crying, or even tears-running-down-her-face crying. It was more like these short broken breaths, almost like she kept seeing stuff that startled her.

Funny thing was, I didn’t feel at all like crying. The best I can describe how I felt on that ride home, and in the days immediately following, was “dull,” like all my feeling edges, inside and out, had been smoothed over with fine sandpaper, leaving me without any emotion whatsoever. I wasn’t thinking much on Daddy, about him lying there like that, still and bleeding, or worrying over how he got himself that way. But through all that not thinking and not worrying, I admit I was doing some major wondering, which specifically had to do with the “whys” of things. Why didn’t I feel anything? Why wasn’t I balling my eyes out? Why didn’t I feel guilty about lying to Detective Kennedy? And most of all:
Why was I so hungry?
I mean that had to be sacrilege. I remember thinking that right at that moment, sticky thighs aside, while Mama and I were enjoying our ride home in the comfort of Daddy’s V-8-powered BMW 7 Series, which the marketing brochure had described as a full-size luxury sedan and likely the benchmark for large sport sedans on the market today, Daddy was probably zipped in a body bag and bouncing around on some stiff cot on his way to the morgue. My daddy, who had only hours ago been scooping wet sand out of my sand castle moat, would soon be rotting in moist dirt forever.
And I was hungry?

Mama went upstairs as soon as we got home. I thought she’d come back down and ask me what I wanted for dinner, but she didn’t. After a while, I went to check on her; she was asleep. I tiptoed to her money drawer, grabbed a twenty-dollar bill, went back downstairs, and called Pizza Palace. The pizza was delivered in less than thirty minutes just like the man on the phone said. I got a Coke from the refrigerator, turned on the TV, and buried myself in the sofa.

I must’ve fallen asleep because when I woke up I saw Daddy’s face on the TV. It took up the whole screen. Then there were pictures of the beach house, Daddy lying dead on the floor with a light blue sheet covering him, and Mrs. Butterworth talking into a microphone.

The next day, Mama got a call from a lady on her Junior League committee. I was surprised she actually answered it. I shot upstairs as fast as I could to pick up the phone in her room.

“Is it true, Diana?” the lady asked. “Is it true that Oliver is dead? That he was murdered? I just got a call from Rhonda Little.”

“The police don’t know for sure,” Mama said.

“You poor dear,” the lady said. “Is there anything I can do? I could bring dinner by tomorrow night.”

“Thank you, Joan,” Mama said. “But I think I need some time alone to digest all this.”

“Of course,” the lady said. “Please don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything at all. And don’t you worry over the summer bazaar. We’ve got it covered. That’s not saying we won’t miss you. Of course we’ll miss you. You’re committee chair. Do you want me to take over for you for a few weeks? I’d be happy to.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Mama said. “And Joan, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anyone about the police suspecting it might be murder. No one knows anything yet for certain, and, well, you know how people can be.”

“Why, of course, Diana,” the lady said. “I won’t tell a soul.”

And just like that the rumors began.

Beautiful, lucky, sorry, gun, motive
.

It was the day before Oliver Lane’s funeral. I’d told Mack that attending our vic’s funeral was strategic, but the truth was, strategy was an excuse. Diana Lane had gotten under my skin. A small part of me thought it was possible my brain had fabricated her. Sure she might be a looker, but the rest of it, the chiseled perfection, the helpless fragility, the innocent yet seductive stare, was an overactive imagination at work. Seeing her again would cure me. I’d start sleeping again. Mack would quit asking me whether I’d heard what he just said. A fifth of Redbreast would last longer than a week.

Mack and I were at our local precinct, a three-room space with six holding cells and a bathroom in a blue-shingled, white-trimmed, awning-graced building that matches every other building in downtown Cooper’s Island. In addition to Mack and me, there are two other officers, a part-timer we call Hawkeye, because he’s a dead ringer for Alan Alda, and an easy-on-the-eyes female rookie named Quinn. Our administrative staff includes a front-desk person, Sharon, who looks like a sweet old lady but chain smokes and has a voice gruffer and deeper than most men; our hippie, weed-smoking IT guy, Jake; and two girl Fridays, Bonnie,
a hell-raising, buxom brunette in her early thirties, and her younger half sister, Klide (their mother obviously had a sense of humor), a shy, introverted, extremely diligent petite blonde. Klide had recently graduated with an economics degree from Duke and decided to intern with us for a few years before pursuing her MBA. I hate the idea of losing her; whenever I want something done right I give it to Klide.

As part of Dare County, we do a lot of business at the sheriff’s office over in Manteo, but each island has its own police department. Ours is sandwiched between a Laundromat and a bowling alley. Cooper’s Alleys doubles as a dance bar during tourist season, and is generally loud and jam-packed. A small grocery store, a drugstore, a hardware store, a bookstore, some tacky touristy shops, and a greasy spoon that makes a mean fish-and-chips rounds out our block of Main Street, which includes three full cobblestone-paved blocks, one either side of us, and a couple of dwindling ones either end of those. Somewhere in either direction Main Street turns back into Route 122. It’s hard to know for certain since Cooper’s doesn’t believe in street signs.

I was on the phone when the other line rang. It had been busy like that all morning. Thank God for Bonnie and her gift of gab; she could make even the most self-important of folks forget they had somewhere else to be.

“He sounds official,” Bonnie said, after forwarding the call to me. “And rich. Think he’s single?”

“Is this Detective Kyle Kennedy?” Bonnie was right. His voice had that gracious gentlemanly lilt specific to wealthy gentleman of the northernmost states of the South, particularly Virginia and North Carolina. The farther south you got, the less lilt and more twang.

“Speaking,” I said.

“This is Captain Benjamin Mercy. I’m with the homicide unit here in Raleigh. Our office is in the process of e-mailing you a
report and some photographs, but I thought you might want to hear this firsthand. It’s about that vic of yours. Oliver Lane?”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“Well it appears he had another life here in Raleigh.”

“What do you mean, in Raleigh?” I asked. “I know his law firm has an office there.”

“He also had a residence here. Shared it with his wife and sons.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You sure we’re talking about the same guy? Our vic lived in Hollyville with his wife and—” I was going to add
daughter
, but my mind had finally gotten itself around what Captain Mercy was telling me. The brain can be slow sometimes, even dense. A wise friend of mine, my teacher and mentor at the police academy in Detroit where I got my training, once said that there are three worlds: the world we know, the world we are yet to know, and the world we don’t even know exists. He said a good cop is always looking for that third world.

“Same guy,” Captain Mercy said. “Wife reported him missing two days ago. Looks like he did a good job of covering his tracks. Condo deed and mortgage are in the wife’s name alone. Same with electric and gas bills. Not many photos. Wife, name’s Julie by the way, says he was camera shy. Only thing I could find in his name is a BMW 7 Series, but we haven’t been able to locate the actual vehicle.”

“I think I know where it might be,” I said.

“Thought that might be the case,” Mercy said. “How’s the weather over there?”

“Hot,” I said.

“Here too. But at least you’ve got the ocean. My wife’s been after me to take her to the Outer Banks for a few weeks now. I apologize. I must admit I hadn’t heard of Cooper’s Island until this all happened.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Nobody has. Let me know if you make it over here. I’ll buy you a cold beer.”

“You take care now,” Mercy said. “And let me know if you’ve got any questions after you read the report.”

“Will do,” I said. “And thanks.”

“No problem. Happy to be of service.”

“Change of plans,” I said to Mack after I hung up the phone. I caught him up on my conversation with Captain Mercy while I downloaded the police report, which included Julie Lane’s statement and a few photos of our vic. “We need to split our resources. I want to get to the second Mrs. Lane as soon as possible. You good with interviewing her alone?”

“Sure thing,” Mack said. “Anything specific you want me to ask her?”

“Just get a sense of her. Too bad they already told her about her husband’s other life. Would’ve been helpful to see her initial reaction.”

Daddy’s funeral was at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, the same church where I’d seen the blue convertible in the parking lot four months earlier. Even though at least twenty big fans were blowing, it still felt just as hot inside as it was outside; everybody was talking about the heat. On the way in, I’d overheard this conversation.

First lady: “It’s like Dante’s
Inferno
in here.”

Second lady: “Well, you know what they say.”

First lady: “What’s that?”

Second lady: “Hell hath no—”

I couldn’t hear the rest.

Mama had asked that Daddy’s casket be closed, which I remember thinking was a good choice. Daddy wouldn’t have liked people seeing him wear makeup. Mrs. Cleary played Pachelbel’s Canon on the piano as pretty much the whole town filed in. Pastor Mike gave Daddy a nice eulogy, even though he hardly knew him, while folks fanned themselves with the remembrance pamphlets Mama had somebody make. Then Polly Anderson, Ryan Anderson’s mom, sang a solo, some hymn about dying and being welcomed into heaven’s gates that I didn’t recognize, but our family was never much on church. I spent most of the service looking around for Ryan, but as it turned out, he wasn’t there, which was
probably good. The black dress Mama had bought for me looked like something a kid would wear, what with its white Peter Pan collar and empire waist. If it were up to Mama, I’d be stuck in preadolescence forever. When the funeral service was over, we got in a big black air-conditioned limousine, rode out of our neighborhood, through the Hollyville town square, which is basically a park with a big white pergola surrounding a platform that gets turned into a stage during the Hollyville Pride Festival and other major events, like the annual Christmas nativity play and Punxsutawney Phil Day (also known as Groundhog Day), then on past the Hollyville Golf Course where Daddy used to play, the Hollyville YMCA where Mama does yoga, and finally to the cemetery. I could see Daddy’s gravesite before we got to it. It looked like an outdoor party was taking place what with all the flowers and the big canopy, except the canopy was black. I remember thinking that Daddy would’ve liked the burial plot Mama and I picked out. It was on top of a hill. Mama said it cost more than the ones that weren’t on the hill, but she could pay for it over time.