Somebody I Used to Know (23 page)

The
Hanfort Times
wasn’t much more restrained. The headline read,
FIRE TRAGEDY KILLS BELOVED LOCAL GIRL
.
Beloved
. Marissa would have rolled her eyes at that. I scanned the article and found I knew most of the facts by heart. Near the end, the fire inspector was quoted as saying that he suspected the cause of the fire was accidental: “Probably a careless smoker or faulty wiring.” Several days after Marissa’s death, the inspector announced that the fire had been caused by an unattended candle left burning. He added that several students were at the house earlier that night, and some of them were drinking, with candles burning throughout the place. “A deadly combination,” he concluded.

The authorities never seemed to seriously consider arson as an option. Why would they? Who would want to kill four college kids?

The final printed page contained Marissa’s obituary. It used her high school graduation portrait, the same photo I carried in my wallet for years, all the way up until I married Gina. She looked beautiful, of course, slightly younger than when we dated and very much like Emily Russell. But in light of the recent revelations about Blake Brown and Roger Kirby, I looked at the photo through a different lens. I took out my phone and called up a news story about Emily Russell, one that featured a portrait of the dead girl. Then I looked at them side by side, Marissa and Emily. The forehead and hairline were different, as was the sharp point of the chin. Emily’s ears protruded a little more, and her smile was wider and seemed more natural. Given Marissa’s natural resistance to anything as silly as a senior portrait, I could see why her smile was forced.

Sure, they looked alike, but maybe not as much as I had imagined. What were the odds there were two pretty redheads in the world who liked to pinch their lips while they thought? Pretty high, I guessed.

I read the obituary, and I nearly choked when I saw a quote from Roger Kirby, who was identified as a close friend of the family.

“Marissa was a special girl, a very special girl. I’ve watched her grow up, and I’m very sorry that we’ve lost her so young. We all loved her.”

I crumpled the paper in my hands and threw it across the room.

*   *   *

When Laurel came back and knocked on the door, I was stretched out watching
Gilligan’s Island
, regressing to my childhood in the face of bad news. I let her in and muted the sound, noting the disapproving look she gave my choice of programming.

“You told me to watch TV,” I said.

“That junk?”

“Forget that,” I said. “Did you talk to that asshole?”

“Briefly. He was on his way to another meeting.”

“What did he have to say?” I asked.

“He says he wasn’t in Eastland the night Marissa died or any other night around that time. He told me I was wrong to think he was in that bar with her, and he resented the implication that something ‘untoward’ might have been going on between the two of them. He told me he’s a family man and was a close friend of the Minors who only wished them the best. About what I expected.”

“Fuck him,” I said.

“Indeed.”

“Laurel?”

“What?”

“Are you sure it was him?” I asked. “That was twenty years ago. Maybe you were wrong. Maybe it was some other older guy. Maybe they were just talking about . . . who knows?”

“It was him,” Laurel said. “I know it. You remember what I was like back then. I wanted to be a cop. I observed everything; I remembered everything. Names, faces. Everything.”

“I know.”

“But it’s my word against his, twenty years later,” she said. “And I’m not sure that’s the most important thing right now.”

I knew she was right. But I didn’t want to admit it.

“What have you been doing since I left?” she asked.

I bent down and picked up the crumpled copy of Marissa’s obituary.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry, Nick.”

I kept it tucked in my fist, the paper pressing against the soft skin of my palm. “What do you think happens when we die?” I asked.

“Seriously?”

“Yes. Seriously. What happens?”

“I have no idea, but I’d like to think . . . I’d like to think I’d see my kids again after I died. I’d hate to think we do all this, form these intense attachments to people, and then we just let them go when we die. But what do I know?”

“What do any of us know?”

“Exactly.”

I held up the crumpled obituary again, waving the little ball in the air. “They didn’t even mention me in here. They list all her family members and deceased grandparents and all of that, but there was no mention of me. I was pissed when I saw that, but then I thought maybe I’m a fool for expecting it. Why would I think they’d mention me?”

“It’s tough when you date someone in college,” Laurel said. “You’re an adult, but you’re not married or engaged. It’s difficult to negotiate. But I understand why you’d feel excluded.”

“Am I fooling myself?” I asked. “Maybe my feelings for Marissa weren’t as real as I thought they were.”

“Only you could know that, Nick.”

“I don’t think I can trust myself to know anything now,” I said. “And you guys keep telling me that I’m imagining things, seeing resemblances and connections where they don’t really exist. So, tell me. Am I a fool? Did I just manufacture these feelings for Marissa? Did I do it because I’m a divorced middle-aged guy?”

“All I can tell you is what I observed when we were in school and you guys were together. I’d say the two of you were very much in love. To be honest, I was a little jealous whenever I saw you together. I didn’t meet Tony until after graduation.” Laurel smiled a little. “It was kind of sick how happy you were.”

“Do you remember she and I always said we’d run off to New Zealand together after graduation?” I asked.

Laurel thought about it for a moment. “That does sound familiar. It sounds very much like the kind of thing Marissa would want to do.”

“Exactly,” I said. “We had plans. We felt like we had a future. It was going to be so full.”

“I know you did,” she said. “I could see it.”

“Then why did she dump me like that, Laurel? Why was she with somebody else?”

“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life trying to understand the thought processes of a twenty-year-old woman who was acting irrationally? You could drive yourself crazy doing that.”

I studied the crumpled ball of paper in my hand. “I feel like I’m on my way to crazy already. New Zealand? Maybe I was crazy back then too.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

R
iley seemed to have had a good time with Laurel’s kids. When I went by their house to pick him up, he looked at me like he didn’t want to leave. I started to put him on his leash in the foyer of Laurel’s house, but then she said, “Why don’t you stay?”

I looked up at her.

“Come on, Nick,” she said. “Tony will want to see you. We haven’t hung out besides doing this investigation stuff.”

“Are you saying that isn’t helping us bond?” I asked.

“Come on,” she said. “There’s beer.”

“I do need a drink,” I said. “Maybe two.”

I set Riley’s leash aside and followed Laurel. Tony stood in the kitchen, holding an open beer. He was taller than me and fitter, and he laughed at nearly everything I said, which made me like him even more. He shook my hand and opened a beer for me, and then invited me to sit at the table. The beer tasted good. It felt even better to be among friends.

“Tony,” I said, “I’m sorry I’ve kept your wife away so much.”

“He doesn’t mind,” Laurel said. “He can do whatever he wants while I’m gone.”

“Seriously, though,” I said. “She’s been a big help. I appreciate it.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Tony said. “Besides, you’ve helped us plenty.”

“I have? Not like this.”

“Remember when Fiona had to do that school report on the city council,” Tony asked, “and you helped her get a tour of the chamber?”

“Sure.”

“And remember the time you and Gina watched the kids when my dad was sick?” Laurel asked.

“Of course,” I said. “That’s what—”

“That’s what friends do,” Tony said, finishing my sentence. He raised his beer, clinking it against mine. “Are you hungry? You can’t drink all this beer on an empty stomach.”

*   *   *

Once we were home, my head buzzing a little and my belly full of good food made by good friends, Riley settled into his bed, let out a long sigh, and fell asleep.

“See?” I said. “Being with those rowdy kids all day isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

He ignored me.

I’d received a text from work. Olivia Bloom asked me if I was ready to come back on Monday and “get into the swing of things again.” It was Saturday evening, and I looked at the two days of the weekend as a long trudge across a desert. What was I going to do but sit and stew and feel worse?

I told Olivia I’d be there bright and early. If I’d had a key to the office, I would have gone in right that moment. But I didn’t. So I was left alone with only a sleeping dog for company.

I paced around the apartment a little. Washed my few dishes, put in a load of laundry. Then my phone was in my hand, dialing Heather.

“Do you have your kids this weekend?” I asked.

“Not tonight. They’re going to a basketball game with their dad.”

“Would you like to come over?”

Heather played it cool. I knew she was mad because I’d left town without seeing her and was abrupt with her in the process. She was going to make me work for her affections.

“I don’t know . . .” she said finally.

“Riley misses you,” I said. “And I’ll tell you all about my little trip yesterday. You’ll be interested.”

“Hmm. Do you think I’m that easy?”

“No,” I said. “But I am.”

She told me she’d see me at six.

I didn’t cook much. I knew how to pour dog food into Riley’s bowl and boil water for my oatmeal or spaghetti. But that was as far as it went. So Heather and I went to dinner at Scotty and Maria’s, a local Italian place.

Once we were seated, Heather reached out and placed her hand on top of mine. “Why don’t we get a drink? Wine? Oh, wait. You don’t like wine.”

I ordered a beer, even though I’d already had some at Laurel’s house, and once I swallowed some of it, I felt better. Heather sipped her wine and said, “Are you going to tell me about your secret trip?”

I needed to pace myself with both food and drink, and I needed to be clearheaded. I
wanted
to tell someone about my trip to Hanfort.

“Sure,” I said. And I did, speaking in a low voice. While I told her about Loretta Stieger, Heather listened and asked only a few questions. When I talked about Roger Kirby and his self-righteous indignation, Heather curled her lip. She asked me how old he was.

“He must be in his seventies,” I said.

“So he was in his fifties when he and Marissa . . .” She made a face like she’d swallowed a lemon. “Sorry. You probably don’t want to think about all that.”

“I don’t.” I looked around the restaurant, watching the other diners, who all looked happy and at ease. “It’s tough to admit I might have lost her to a man thirty years older than me.”

Heather reached her hand out again. “It’s not about you. You’ve always been a prize. It was something about Marissa. Maybe she was hung up on her dad. That’s why girls go after older men. They have daddy issues.”

I pictured Brent Minor. He was distant and cold, all about business. But Marissa never doubted that her father loved and cared for her. So I gulped some more beer. Did it matter what Marissa sought in Roger Kirby?

“Is that all you learned?” Heather asked.

“Roger Kirby isn’t the worst of it.”

“What could be worse than that?”

I told her about Blake Brown. His breakup with Marissa and the fire in Florida. While I spoke, it felt as though everything in the restaurant grew still, telescoping down to the two of us as I shared the hideous news. Heather sat frozen, her hand resting on the stem of her wineglass. She looked away from me, while I continued to speak, and when I’d told her everything about Blake and the fire, she didn’t say anything. She stared into her wine, her finger tapping the tabletop.

“They don’t know for sure, of course,” I said. “But circumstantially it looks like Marissa’s death could be murder. I talked to that cop who investigated the fire originally, and he said he had his doubts about it being an accident back then. Something about a nine-one-one call. It was a woman who called in, and according to this detective, she sounded like she was surprised there were people in the house. I guess he was right—there might have been more to the case, but I don’t know what the nine-one-one call could have to do with Blake, since it was a woman who made it.”

“Shit,” Heather said. She looked distracted and unnerved by the information I’d shared with her. She lifted her hand to her temple and rubbed it as if it hurt. “What are they going to do now?”

“Who knows?” I said. “It’s all over. The evidence is gone, the house, the nine-one-one tapes. It’s all over and gone. They’ll talk to this guy, and we can all hope he’ll confess.”

Heather left her wineglass on the table and took a couple of long swallows of water. I remembered the way my appetite faded after talking to Nate about the fire, and I worried Heather was experiencing the same thing.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is lousy dinner conversation. Let’s talk about something else.”

“It’s just shocking, that’s all,” she said, trying to put on a brave face. “Shocking and terrible.”

“And you wonder why I’m single,” I said. “Talking about something this gruesome when we go out to a nice restaurant.”

Heather forced a smile, but the mood was dead on the table. And we ate mostly in silence.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

H
eather left in the morning. She had to pick her kids up from their father’s house, and then they were all going to a cookout at a family friend’s. She invited me halfheartedly, after telling me her ex-husband would be there, and I was more than happy to pass.