Wall-To-Wall Dead (17 page)

“I didn’t know they’d gone to marriage counseling,” I said. Derek had never mentioned it to me.

“I don’t know how formal it was,” Judy answered. “Barry does do marriage counseling for the parishioners, but I think this was more in the way of a favor to a friend.”

She shrugged. “Things will be different now. You’re both mature enough to know that it’s going to take work, and that it won’t always be easy.”

I nodded. And then I leaned a little closer and lowered my voice. “So this strip club they went to last night…”

Judy rolled her eyes. “Boys will be boys.”

“Would you happen to know the name of it?”

She looked surprised. So surprised, in fact, that her eyebrows disappeared beneath her bangs. “Why?”

I thought about lying and telling her that I wanted to hire a stripper for my fiancé’s bachelor party. And then I reconsidered lying to the minister’s wife and told her the truth instead. “Derek said he saw a girl there he thought he recognized. I wanted to see if he was right.”

“You want to go to a strip club?”

Not really. I mean, that’d be kind of weird, me walking into a place where women were taking their clothes off to loud music. But I didn’t know how else to find out whether it really was Jamie that Derek had seen. I mean, I could ask her…but how would I know that she told me the truth?

“I guess I thought I’d go and just ask someone if she works there. Or see if maybe they have pictures of the…um…attractions.”

“I see,” Judy said, her lips twitching. “I don’t think Derek would be too happy about the idea, Avery. No offense.”

“You could come with me.”

“I think Barry would be even less happy.”

Probably so.

“I just want to know if it was her,” I said plaintively.

Judy tilted her head. “If she wanted you to know, don’t you think she’d tell you? If she hasn’t, don’t you think that’s reason enough not to snoop?”

Interesting reasoning. But no, the fact that it wasn’t common knowledge was exactly the reason I wanted to find out. Something was going on at the condo building, and I wanted to know what. The more I found out about all the neighbors, the more likely it was that I’d stumble onto something.

But it probably wouldn’t do any good to keep talking to Judy about it. She obviously wasn’t going to tell me the name of the place, or agree to go there with me. She might not even know what it was called. If Derek hadn’t told me, Barry might not have told Judy. So I put Jamie and Candy and Miss Shaw and the whole business out of my head and concentrated on taking part in the conversation and enjoying the rest of the reception. And it worked wonderfully—for about ten minutes, until the food service started.

The Tremont had lovely food service, very upscale and snazzy. All male waiters, all in pinstriped pants and starched white shirts, with pale pink cummerbunds and bow ties for the occasion, to match the wedding party. All were young, handsome, and clean-shaven, with hair that was either short-cropped or slicked back. It seemed the Tremont Hotel had the same policy on personal appearance as did the New York Yankees.

Our waiter even came with a sexy accent.
“Perdon, señorita,”
he murmured when he leaned over my shoulder to place the first course—soup—in front of me.

Derek turned, of course. So did I. And there was a moment of mutual—and uncomfortable—silence while all three of us looked at one another.

After a moment, my eyes dropped from the man’s face—familiar—to the name tag on his chest. It was also
familiar, but wasn’t the name I had expected to see. The face belonged to Mariano, our upstairs neighbor at the condo. The name tag…well, it identified him as Gregory.

Neither of us spoke, but I didn’t doubt that Derek had noticed the same thing I had. And Mariano knew we had noticed. He had big, brown eyes with long, curving lashes—Bambi eyes—and for a second, they scanned the room as if he were looking for the nearest exit. Then he pulled it together.

“Perdon,”
he muttered again, and picked up the next bowl of soup, which he put in front of Derek.

My boyfriend and I exchanged a look, but waited until Mariano—
perdon
: Gregory—had wheeled his cart to the next table before saying anything.

“Am I crazy?” Derek muttered.

“If you are, then I am, too,” I answered, keeping my voice low so the others wouldn’t hear.

“Mariano, right?”

“It looks like him.” And Josh had said Mariano worked in the hotel business in Portland.

“Huh,” Derek said.

I nodded. “My thought exactly. But now’s probably not the time. Or the place.”

Derek picked up his spoon. “You’re right. Let’s focus on the important things. I’m starving.”

“You’re always starving.”

“I need to build up my strength for later,” Derek said.

“Dancing?”

“That, too. But I was thinking of tonight.”

“What happens tonight?”

He didn’t answer. But he smiled.

“Oh,” I said. And blushed.

We did dance, though. A lot. Derek’s a good dancer, and I’m not too bad myself. And we danced with other people as well as each other. Which was how, at one point, Derek
found himself dancing—and laughing—with the woman I’d noticed walking past us in the cathedral earlier.

I caught his eye from where I was dancing with Zach, another of Derek’s friends from high school, the one who lived in New Hampshire. He winked at me. Derek, not Zach. And after the dance was over, he came and found me, as I knew he would.

“Well?” I said when the music had slowed down and we were rocking back and forth on the dance floor. Everyone was dancing by now, including the kids, and there wasn’t really room to do much but rock.

“Well, what?”

“Who is she?”

“Dr. Lawrence,” Derek said. And added, “The medical examiner.”

Of course. I’d met her once, over a gurney with a dead body. But I hadn’t expected to see her again in this setting.

“I can’t believe I didn’t remember her.”

“I imagine she probably looked a lot different the last time you saw her,” Derek said.

“She did. But still.”

Back then she’d been dressed in slacks and a heavy wool sweater, because it was cold in the morgue. And I’d had my mind on other things, like the dead body on the gurney and my friend, who was there to identify it if she could. Now Dr. Lawrence’s hair was fluffed and she was wearing makeup and a nice dress and jewelry and heels.

“What is she doing here?”

“She’s the aunt of the bride,” Derek said. “Carla’s mother was Susan Lawrence before she married Carla’s father.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, why?”

I grinned. “John Nickerson told me that when he was thirteen, he had a crush on a girl named Susie Lawrence. Do you think it’s the same one?”

“Probably,” Derek said. “They’re from Waterfield. The girls grew up there.”

“What’s Dr. Lawrence’s first name?”

“Sandra,” Derek said.

“She never married?”

He shook his head. “I guess it might be tough for a pathologist to get a date. Especially a female one.”

“Men being more squeamish than women?”

“When it comes to that,” Derek said and swung me around. “She’s a nice lady.”

“She seemed nice when I talked to her. Although the dead body was a bit of a distraction.”

“I can imagine. She remembered you. Asked how you were.”

“That’s nice of her.” I snuggled into his arms, and we danced in silence for a while. “I wonder what’s up with Mariano. Gregory.”

“I have a pretty good idea,” Derek said.

I did, too. “Illegal alien, you think?”

“That’d be my guess. He’s probably using his boyfriend’s Social Security number to work.”

“That’s illegal, isn’t it?”

Derek nodded. “Highly. Social Security fraud of some sort, I’m sure. I don’t know what the penalties for something like that would be, but I doubt they’d be good.”

Probably not. Being in the country illegally is a crime, although tons of people do it. Back about six months ago, I’d done a little bit of research on immigration, and I had learned that most of the illegal immigrants to the United States—other than the ones crossing the border from Mexico—come through the airports on tourist visas, and when the visa runs out, they just don’t go home. New York City is full of young English and Irish men and women who came over that way. I’d known lots of them during my twenties. Baristas, waiters and waitresses, bartenders and shopgirls. It’s much easier to disappear in a city like New York, so there were fewer of them up here in the snowy wastes of Maine, although Irina had been an illegal alien, living and working under the radar, until she’d gotten married this summer.

If Mariano was an illegal alien, he’d be deported if he was caught. If he was using someone else’s Social Security number—even with that person’s knowledge and approval—he probably faced jail time. And Gregg—because it was probably his identity Mariano was using—would face some sort of criminal charges, too, most likely.

“Should we talk to him?”

Derek looked down at me. “Why?”

“To tell him his secret is safe with us. That we won’t report him.”

“We won’t?”

“Of course not. It’s none of our business, is it?”

“He’s breaking the law,” Derek said.

“Irina was breaking the law, too. You didn’t report her.”

“I didn’t know she was illegal,” Derek said. “And she wasn’t using anyone else’s Social Security number.”

“Not that you know about. But that’s water under the bridge anyway. She’s married now. But it’s not like Mariano and Gregg can get married, is it?”

“They could if they moved to Massachusetts,” Derek said. “It’s just an hour away.”

That was a pretty good point. But…“Maybe they don’t want to move to Massachusetts. Gregg’s got a job here. Or maybe there’s another reason they can’t get married. Maybe they just don’t want to. It’s none of our business.”

“Then let’s not worry about it,” Derek said. “At least not tonight.” He swung me around again. I subsided as the room spun.

Checkout was eleven the next morning, and we waited almost that long to get ourselves together to head back to Waterfield. It had been a long night, the bed was comfortable, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.

“So about that strip club…” I told Derek when we were ready to go, with our suitcases packed and my dress and his suit in garment bags.

He folded his arms across his chest. “I hoped you’d forget about that.”

Fat chance. “C’mon. It’s a Sunday morning. They’re not going to be open. Can’t you just tell me the name of it so I can drive by on my way home?”

“Why do you need to? Like you said yesterday, it’s none of our business how other people make their money. Not Mariano or Jamie.”

Boy, it’s annoying to have your own words thrown back in your face!

“I just want to see the place,” I argued. “Just in case there’s a picture of her out front. To know if it’s her.”

“But why?”

I told him what I’d told myself last night: that something was going on at the condo complex, and that the more information we had about all the residents, the better our chances were of figuring out what it was.

Derek sighed. “Fine. There won’t be anyone there anyway. C’mon.” He picked up his bag and my suitcase and headed for the door. I followed with the suit and the dress.

In the hotel garage, he got into the truck and I got into the Beetle, and then I followed him out of the lovely historical neighborhoods by the harbor into a more industrial part of town, full of used car lots and wire-topped chain-link fences, until he slowed down in front of a long, low, cinder-block building painted virulently purple. It had a sign on the roof saying GIRLS—GIRLS—GIRLS, sort of the same way Guido’s Pizzeria said HOT—HOT—HOT. At night, this sign probably flashed in neon colors, too.

There are plenty of titty bars and X-rated theaters in New York City. I’d walked past them almost every day of my life, tucked into storefronts on Eight and Ninth Avenues in Hell’s Kitchen, with their blacked-out windows and their photo lineups of the big-busted attractions to be found inside.

This was my first experience with a strip club in the wholesome heartland, and it looked different, yet eerily similar. A big warehouse-looking building—it might have
been a warehouse at some point, given the industrial makeup of the rest of the neighborhood—with no windows and only one door. The door was solid, so it must be pitch-black inside with the lights off. The equivalent of New York’s blacked-out windows. There was a tasteful and discreet sign above the door indicating that this was the Pompeii Gentleman’s Club, which was ironic, considering that the people who frequent strip clubs—present company excepted, since my boyfriend had been here two nights ago—often bear no discernable resemblance to gentlemen.