I Love You More: A Novel (27 page)

This was what I learned. One: I needed to find out how to get a job as one of those dictionary editors. Two: Or better yet, I could write a new, holistic dictionary. Three: Having a boyfriend was a lot more difficult than I thought. Four: In order to keep a boyfriend, on top of being nice, sweet, and a good listener, you had to practice self-sacrifice, modesty, and pretense; in other words, you had to be an expert liar. Five: Self-sacrifice just wasn’t a strong enough word. Losing an entire spelling bee? That was
martyrdom
. Six: The All That Girls, especially Kelly Morgan, weren’t that stupid after all, at least about some things.

They say timing is everything. That’s certainly the case with a murder investigation. It’s also the case with lovemaking. Usually the two don’t go together.

I’ll start with the murder investigation.

Remember Julie Lane’s solid alibi? She was at a design charrette in Philadelphia the day of the murder. We’d done our job. We’d verified that she had checked in and boarded both of her flights. We’d verified that she was at the charrette. In the event that she’d been able to sneak away, commit the murder, and return undetected, we’d verified that no cars had been rented and no flights had been reserved in her name. End of story, right? Wrong.

It was like my mentor back in Detroit had said, a cop should always be looking for the world he doesn’t know exists. It was all there right in front of us, and yet we didn’t even think to look for it.

Mack and I were at the office filing our monthly reports. “It’s impossible to keep these names straight,” he said. “I know I keep saying that, but it’s not getting any easier. There’s the first Mrs. Lane, the second Mrs. Lane, and the third Mrs. Lane, better known as Ms. Miles. I get all that, but I keep mixing Diana and Julie up on these reports. I say Diana did or said something when
it was actually Julie and vice versa. I even get the women themselves mixed up, Diana and Julie especially. There’s the hair thing, they both have blue eyes, and they’re about the same height.”

“I don’t think they look that much alike,” I said. “Diana’s a little taller, and …” I paused.

“More attractive?” Mack said.

“Well, yeah.”

“To you maybe,” Mack said. “I’m betting the average Mary or Joe wouldn’t notice that big of a difference. Geez, they could probably take each other’s places. You know, like those twins in that movie.”

“
The Parent Trap
?” I stopped writing and looked at Mack. “Wait a minute. What did you say?”

“I said it’s like they’re twins.”

“No, I mean before that.”

“They could take each other’s places?”

“Yeah, that,” I said.

“Wow,” Mack said.

“Didn’t you say something about not finding Diana Lane’s driver’s license at the beach house that day?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Mack said. “She said she’d misplaced it. Shit. Why didn’t we think about this earlier? I’ll get Bonnie to search all the airline databases.”

“No, have Klide do it,” I said.

It didn’t take long for Klide to find a reservation in Diana Lane’s name for a one-way flight from Norfolk, Virginia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the morning of Oliver Lane’s murder. She also found a reservation for a rental car in Diana Lane’s name that was picked up in downtown Philly at 11:03 the night of July 2nd and dropped off at Norfolk International Airport at 9:28 the next morning. Assuming we were right about Julie Lane orchestrating this entire thing, which I would’ve bet my meager life savings on, that left plenty of time for her to drive to Cooper’s
Island during the night, do the murder, drive to Norfolk, drop off the car, hop on a 10:15 a.m. flight back to Philly and make her scheduled 11:50 a.m. flight home to Raleigh.

The next morning, Mack and I headed back to the mainland. It wasn’t a Sunday, but we didn’t need to worry about catching anyone at home. We’d decided to make this an official visit, and Captain Mercy had been more than willing to loan us one of his interrogation rooms.

Julie Lane didn’t look as in control in the small, spare room as she had at her condo. She wore a gray silk blouse under a charcoal suit that looked like it had been tailored specifically for her, which meant it was, and looked, expensive. Mack asked her to sit across the table from him. I was leaning up against the wall behind her chair with my arms crossed. She looked at me briefly as she sat, but then focused her eyes on Mack. She didn’t wait for any formalities.

“Why am I here?” she asked.

Mack set the airline and rental car reservations down in front of her. “Take a look at these, Mrs. Lane,” he said, “and tell me what you see.”

She looked, but didn’t touch them. “Some sort of list from US Airways.”

“What else?”

“A Hertz Rent-a-Car statement.”

“What name is on them?”

Without checking the paperwork again, she looked straight into Mack’s eyes and said, “Diana Lane.”

Mack stared back at her and didn’t say anything.

“What does this have to do with me?” she asked. “I don’t even know Diana Lane. Why would I know anything about her future travel plans?”

“Past travel plans,” Mack said.

“Whatever,” she said.

“Did you note the date?” Mack asked. “Why don’t you take a better look?”

She looked at Mack defiantly. “I don’t need to take a better look, Detective. I saw the date just fine.”

“Don’t you find it interesting that Diana Lane was in two places that day? At the beach house and on a plane?”

“That’s the wonder of air travel, I suppose,” she said. “If you’re resourceful, which I’m assuming this woman is—Oliver wouldn’t have been attracted to a neophyte—you can get places pretty quickly these days.”

“In this case, resourcefulness wouldn’t cut it, ma’am. Detective Kennedy and I, along with ten other people, can attest to the fact that Diana Lane was in a beach house on Cooper’s Island when that plane took off. Are you implying she’s a magician?”

“I’m not
implying
anything, Detective. I don’t care what that woman is. Nor do I care whether or not she was on some airplane.”

“Mrs. Lane,” I said. She seemed startled by my voice but didn’t look at me. “Detective Jones is being polite. What he’s trying to say is that we know it was
you
.”

She twirled a lock of hair. “What do you mean, me?”

I walked around the table and faced her. “You used Diana Lane’s name and identification. You rented that car. You were on that plane.”

“I told you I was at a design charrette. A lot more than ten people can verify that. And besides, these days, with such tight airport security measures, it would be impossible for someone to impersonate someone else.”

“Tight security also means plenty of surveillance,” I said.

“It wasn’t me,” she said. Her voice sounded hollow. “And even if it was, what does that prove?”

“Motive and opportunity,” Mack said.

“And how about evidence, detectives?” A thin, satisfying smile crossed her lips. “I’m not answering any more questions without a
lawyer. So if you think you have something on me, then arrest me. Otherwise, I’ve got to pick up my boys from preschool.” She rose, and without looking back, she walked out the door.

“She’s right about evidence,” I said to Mack. “Even if we can prove she rented a car and got on a plane, we’ve got to put her at the scene.”

“What about Diana Lane?”

“What about her?”

“We going to talk to her?”

“I’ll handle that,” I said. “You follow up with the airport cameras and the crime scene. And show her picture around. See if she got gas somewhere along the way. The guys on the ferry may not have recognized Roberta Miles, but they may remember a slim, leggy blonde.”

Diana Lane looked thin and tired when she opened the door, but I wasn’t any less drawn to her. In fact, she looked even lovelier, even more vulnerable. As always, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. And as always, I wondered what it was about her that could so easily unsettle me, make me lose my mind and my cool. It was like I was fifteen all over again, and Harriet Tanner had smiled at me as I passed her locker.

“You sound under the weather,” I said, when she placed the tea pitcher on the coffee table.

“I can’t seem to get rid of this bug,” she said.

“Have you been to a doctor?”

“It’s nothing, Detective. It’ll pass eventually.”

“Is Picasso at school?”

“Yes,” she said. “What can I help you with?”

I told her about the airline ticket and rental car agreement.

“My name? But that’s impossible.” She seemed genuinely confused. In the past when she’d answered uncomfortable questions, I could always tell she wasn’t providing the entire truth. This time I would’ve sworn she was. She seemed surprised yet hurt, as if
something that she hadn’t understood, something that had been bothering her, had become clear, but not in the way she’d hoped.

“Do you have any idea how Julie Lane might have gotten your driver’s license?”

“No,” she said.

“You misplaced it, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You mentioned it at the beach house that day, the … um … day your husband died.”

“Did I?” she said. She began wringing her hands. “Oh, that’s right. It was a false alarm. I found it a few days later, under the sofa. It must’ve fallen out of my bag. I have this habit of putting it in there loose— Oh my. I never poured our tea.” She reached for the pitcher, but her hand was shaking too badly to grasp the handle.

I took her hand in mine to steady it. I meant to say “Let me do that,” but instead I pulled her to me and kissed her. And then I couldn’t stop kissing her.

Somehow we got to her bedroom;
that
I remember. The rest was a wash of skin: her lips, her thighs, her neck, her breasts, her sweet, sweet ass. Then I was inside her, lost and found simultaneously. Like murder, there’s a smell to sex, a heady combination of sweat and pheromones. Sometimes the stench two people make is stale, sour, and you can’t wait to wash it away with a shower. Other times the smell is fragrant, seductive, better than anything your body can produce on its own, and, like a kid who gets the best attributes of his parents, any resemblance to you alone is lost. That’s how it was with Diana Lane.

I didn’t drive back to Cooper’s Island that afternoon; I got a hotel room. I took a shower and camped there until I was sure my showing back up at the house wouldn’t tip Picasso off to what I’d been doing with her mother. On the way over, I stopped off at the grocery store to pick up dinner and wine. I tried not to think
about the case. I tried not to think about the fact that even though it might look as if Julie Lane killed her husband, the entire thing could just be a red herring. I tried not to think about the fact that even if Julie Lane was the shooter, Diana was still complicit.

Picasso answered the door when I returned, two grocery bags in my arms. “Mama said you were coming to dinner. Are you cooking?”

“What gave it away?” I asked, and smiled.

Smad
: to be very, very, very angry with someone.

Hate
: to feel intense or passionate dislike for someone.

Everything changed for the better when Detective Kennedy started coming around the house in an “unofficial” capacity. It was January, which was about halfway through Mama’s, Jewels’s, and Bert’s year apart, also known as Purgatory Year or just plain
purgatory
(a place or state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating their sins before going to heaven). I’d randomly zeroed in on that word a few days after Daddy died, and even though Mama and I aren’t religious, and especially aren’t Roman Catholic, I remember thinking it was a positive sign. After all, spending a little time expiating was far more desirable than the alternative. For the most part, Mama and Detective Kennedy did about the same stuff Ryan Anderson and I did. They sat on the porch swing, if it wasn’t too cold out, or the sofa, or at the dining-room table, and talked. They watched movies. They even played board games like Scrabble, Monopoly, and Clue. They didn’t seem to mind if I hung out with them. It was hard for me to stay away from a game of Scrabble. I really liked it when Detective Kennedy visited, and I think Mama did too. She quit sleeping so much, and she started wearing makeup again. But, more important,
everybody seemed to have forgotten about Daddy’s murderer. There was no sign of Mama or anyone else going to jail. Detective Jones hadn’t been to our house in forever. Detective Kennedy had stopped asking official questions. And the rumors had died down.