Crescent City Connection (18 page)

God, I wish I knew
. She said, “Do you have an address for him? A phone number?”

Michelle shook her head, holding her shoulders with arms crossed over her chest.

“Tell me about him.”

“Tell you what?” She evidently didn’t know where to start.

“What does Lovelace say about him? Does he live alone? Is he married?”

“I think he does live alone. She hasn’t mentioned anyone else.”

“Go on.”

“He’s an artist. He wears white all the time.”

“What kind of artist?”

“Well, now, I don’t know. That’s funny, she didn’t say—but then she was talking so fast. Like she didn’t have much time.”

“What’s the white about?”

“Some kind of religious thing, I guess. Lovelace says he meditates a lot, and everything in his house is white. Also, he cleans house a million times a day and take showers all the time. Maybe he’s got some kind of thing about purity. He doesn’t talk. I forgot about that.”

“Doesn’t talk? He’s mute?”

Michelle frowned, apparently puzzled. “I’m not sure. All I know is, crazy Uncle Isaac doesn’t talk much.”

“Much? Or at all?”

She bit her lip. “Not sure.”

“Has she only called once?”

“Yes.”

“If she calls back, call us instantly, and try to talk her into calling us.”

“Okay.”

Skip asked a few questions designed to reveal Isaac’s living arrangements, but Michelle didn’t seem to know whether he had an apartment or a house, or what neighborhood he lived in.

And then Skip asked the question that was really bothering her: “Why did her own father kidnap her?”

“That’s what I’m wondering. She doesn’t know.”

Skip was fitful on the plane going home. She stared at the picture of Lovelace and Michelle the feds had given her, Michelle at least having cooperated to that extent. Lovelace was quite a bit taller than her friend, and somewhat heavier. She had almond-shaped eyes and a conventionally pretty face, except that it was still round with baby fat. Her hair was light red, pulled back on the sides with a barrette, left hanging in back. More or less a Campbell Soup kid. She looked nothing like the granddaughter of a homicidal maniac.

This thing was gnawing at Skip. Her mind raced the way it used to when she was new in the department. There were hardly any threads to pull at. And when she had pulled them all, she might have nothing. She might race around like some kind of Type A and still come up with nothing.

That night she barely slept. She would doze, and then she would dream of something chasing her, and she would scream and Steve would wake her up—she wouldn’t have screamed at all, just made the little gasps of nightmares.

Around seven she fell into a sweaty torpor and awoke two hours later—it was Saturday and Steve had taken pains to let her sleep. It was Napoleon who woke her, barking at birds in the courtyard.

She turned over grumpily and tried to go back to sleep. She was too groggy for mind-race now, but she had a residual panic. She was almost afraid to try anything lest she run out of things to try. She felt paralyzed.

How in the hell to find a man who was “an artist,” whatever that might be, and about whom she knew nothing else except that he liked to wear white. What kind of white? Jeans? Ice cream suits? Robes?

She looked him up in the phone book, and then threw it across the room, frustrated.

Who knew him? Other artists, maybe. That was a thought.

His parents and siblings. Only, two of those were missing and he didn’t talk to the other one.

It might be Saturday, but she was going to work on this thing until she dropped—which would probably be about noon, the way she felt now.

She opened her home Jacomine file and fingered the People magazine piece Aunt Alice had given her—the one about Rosemarie Owens. After talking to Irene Jacomine, Shellmire had said he’d send someone to interview her.

But had he?

Skip thought,
I hate this national case shit. I’d rather do it myself.

Idly, she dialed Dallas information and asked for Owens. You could have knocked her over when the robot spat out a number. Frantically, she scrambled for a pencil and ended up having to call back.

She got a recording: “This is the voice mail of Rosemarie Owens. If you are interested in the rights to my story, please call Natalie Rosenbusch at ICM in L.A. I am not giving interviews at this time. I am not investing any money, nor am I contributing to any new nonprofit organizations, nor am I able to raise my usual contributions to old charities, nor am I interested in discovering any new relatives. This is an informational tape only. It will not be checked for messages.”

Even in her nasty humor, Skip had to chuckle. “These Texans,” she said to herself and dialed ICM in L.A.

Failing to rouse anyone, she checked information for Natalie or N. Rosenbusch and came up with an “N.”

It was two hours earlier in L.A., and N. Rosenbusch was obviously still out cold.

“Sorry to wake you,” she said. “But this is Detective Skip Langdon in New Orleans and I have an emergency. I need to call Rosemarie Owens about her granddaughter.”

Suddenly Natalie got a lot more lucid.

“You’re really pissing me off. She doesn’t have a granddaughter—you heard her message. She doesn’t want to talk to you, and I don’t appreciate being waked up with bullshit stories.”

“She has a son named Daniel and a granddaughter named Lovelace who may be in grave danger.” She considered using the Jacomine name but decided that would make Rosemarie too angry. “Her ex-husband is wanted for murder and may try to contact her. She really needs to call me right away.”

“Lady, you are so full of shit.””

She hung up.

It had all happened so fast, so unexpectedly.
I should have done it from the office
, Skip thought, and called Headquarters to say she was expecting a call from Natalie Rosenbusch, just in case.

Fat chance
, she thought, throwing on a pair of slacks barely passable for office wear.

It took her less than half an hour to get there, and Natalie hadn’t called—but she was probably still home in bed. Skip called back and left a message for her: “I forgot to leave my phone number.”

In a moment her phone gave a little half ring, and she had to smile, figuring Natalie had done exactly what she would have done—dialed Headquarters, asked for Detective Langdon, and hung up quickly when it turned out she was real, the call was going through. Ten minutes later Rosemarie called.

“Detective Langdon, I got an odd call from Natalie Rosenbusch.” Her voice was lightly accented—Southern but somehow almost British—one of those unplaceable accents self-invented people have. It sounded stiff, almost starched, as if she were holding it tight, keeping it from trembling.

“Ah, Mrs. Owens. I’m sorry to bother you, but your granddaughter, Lovelace, has disappeared and I thought…”

“I beg your pardon, could you say the girl’s name again, please?”

Oh, Christ. I wonder if she even knows she’s got a granddaughter.

“Lovelace. Daniel Jacomine’s daughter.”

Rosemarie made some kind of a sound—something midway between a sob and a gasp—but said nothing.

Skip said, “Look, it sounds as if you’re pretty surprised. I wonder if you even knew you have a granddaughter.”

“I really don’t…”

“We have a situation here. The girl may be in grave danger. Your ex-husband, Errol Jacomine, is the subject of an intense investigation both by our department and by the FBI. I need you to cooperate with us. Now. There isn’t time to think this over.”

“My God. That must be what the FBI wants. What’s happening?”

“Your granddaughter was kidnapped—”

“Kidnapped? From where?”

“From Northwestern. Where she’s a sophomore.”

“Jesus. She’s grown up.”

“Mrs. Owens, could you hear me out, please?” Skip started from the beginning. “Your son, Daniel, has one daughter, Lovelace, who’s twenty and a sophomore at Northwestern. He’s divorced, but there’s no custody question—that’s long since been settled. However, several days ago, he kidnapped Lovelace and drugged her. Lovelace escaped and we have no idea where she is. We also have no idea where Daniel is, but we suspect he’s with your ex-husband, Errol Jacomine, who I’m sure you know is an extremely dangerous man, wanted in at least two murders. We believe your granddaughter is in a great deal of danger.”

“Well, this is quite a bit to swallow.” Indeed, she sounded choked.

“I’m sure you understand we wouldn’t call you if we could possibly have avoided it.”

“Detective Langdon, all I can say is you must be a mighty desperate woman. I haven’t seen my son Daniel since he was seven years old—I believe he’d be over forty by now. And I certainly haven’t seen or heard from Errol Jacomine. To answer the only question you’ve actually asked me so far, no, I wasn’t aware I had a granddaughter. What on Earth can I possibly do for you?”

You’re right,
she thought.
I’m as desperate as they come. And you sound like one cool customer
. She said, “Well, you’ve answered one of my implied questions, which was ‘Have you seen Errol Jacomine lately?’ Let me expand on that. Have you any idea where he is?”

“None whatsoever. When we left Savannah together at the respective ages of sixteen and fifteen, we didn’t get any farther than Alabama. I was a young mother waiting tables while trying to take care of my child. Daniel’s father didn’t care any more about him than he did about that poor dog he killed that used to bark all night and keep him up.”

“Your dog?”

“The neighbor’s. Earl took care of Daniel while I was at work, which usually meant he invited his buddies over to play cards and threw the kid a peanut butter sandwich now and then.”

“Did he work?”

“Well, he brought in a little money. Yes, he did. I have to give him credit for that.”

“What did he do exactly?”

“Why, he preached in a garage. And passed the collection plate. He had fliers printed to advertise himself—just like he was putting on a play.”

“At sixteen he did this?”

“For a while he did what I did—waited tables—and I swear I believe he robbed a store now and then, although he never admitted it. But he did have sudden influxes of money. Meanwhile, he met a very interesting charismatic preacher—he’s dead now, I heard—that Earl kind of learned his trade from. And I’ll tell you something, Detective. Earl was good. Not-a-dry-eye-in-the-house kind of good. That man could preach the pants off the choir—and did, too. Why, yes he most assuredly did.”

“Is that why you left him?”

“Oh, no. That’s not why I left him. You have no idea why I left him, young lady, and you don’t want to.”

Oh, I do. I do.
She said, “Actually, I had a few encounters with him and I’m a lot more puzzled about what anyone would be doing with him in the first place.”

“Well, I can tell you about that. I can tell you a lot about that. You’ve probably read about me in People magazine and the New York Times and all those kinds of things and what you see is the Rosemarie of today. When I think back to Rosemarie at fourteen, I could just cry.” The words were pouring out of her so fast she was tripping over them. Skip suspected her life with Jacomine was something she didn’t often think about and couldn’t talk about—with anyone.

“Rosemarie in those days was a plain little thing—to look at me today, you’d never believe it. Plain and scared. I lived completely in my head, was what I did. I read a lot. I’ll bet that surprises you, doesn’t it? You probably think I’m just some brassy blonde who marries rich men, but let me tell you something, honey. You don’t get out of Savannah unless you’ve got some idea what the outside world is like. You die of claustrophobia or become a drunk. I knew the world through books, and I wanted to see it. I wanted to go places and meet people!

“But I was this plain little pudgy girl from the most ordinary family you can name—my daddy was an accountant, and my mama was a cashier in a drugstore. They were Southern Baptists, and they made me go to church twice a day on Sunday and once on Wednesday night. Now, how was a girl like that gonna go anywhere or do anything? I wanted to see England; I wanted to see France; I wanted to see someone’s underpants. How old are you, Detective?”

“I’m, uh—”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You’re under thirty, aren’t you? Or maybe around there—you’ve already made detective. However old you are, you have no idea what the world was like then. My mama told me that people didn’t have sex outside of marriage unless they were very, very low-rent. But you see, I read novels, so I knew they did—outside Savannah, of course. I bet you think Peyton Place never existed before the TV series.

“My mama never touched me that I can remember. Now, isn’t that pathetic? I don’t even remember her hugging me. Are you getting a picture here, Detective?”

Rosemarie had become so excited Skip had to hold the phone an inch from her ear. “Are you saying the combination made you—uh …”

She was about to say “vulnerable,” or something like it, but Rosemarie finished for her: “Hot to trot. I was easy prey for somebody like Earl Jackson, who preyed on … easy prey. I remember the first time he touched me, walking me home from school. Put his arm around my waist, and I thought I’d burn up. Is he still as ugly as he ever was?”

“He’s not my type.”

“Little weasely-looking fellow. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be touched. By anybody. And then, too, he knew quite a few ways to tap into interesting sensations I didn’t know the human body was capable of. Poor a specimen as he was, I always wondered what he saw in me—well, I think I know now.

“First of all, I was a real easy target. Second, I had such low self-esteem he could pretty much push me around any old way he wanted. Third—and maybe this is important—he had this Pygmalion thing.”

“I beg your pardon?” Skip hadn’t expected to hear her say that—Rosemarie was an odd combination of sophisticated and down-home Southern.

“He wanted to make me into the woman he wanted. Like a Stepford wife or something. I lost weight and got pretty sexy for him, which was his downfall in the end because then I figured out he wasn’t the only fish I could catch. But that wasn’t why I left him. Uh-uh.