Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

“They probably did after they heard the shots,” Lamar said. “Before that… that’s the kind of place where everyone minds their own business. You know, a sleazy sort of place with pink flamingoes on the bathroom wallpaper.” He leaned closer for a better look, and I leaned back to be certain to stay out of the freeze zone. “I saw the pictures only briefly when the police interrogated me and then again at the trial. Poor kid.” His finger hovered over the image of Vera. “It must have been terrible for her.”

I needed a break from the photographs, so I consulted the autopsy report. “It says here she was beaten before she was shot. I guess that would explain the condition of the room.” The list of contusions, abrasions, and broken bones was staggering (not to mention stomach churning), so I let my gaze drift to the last line of the report. “She was finally killed with a.38 Smith & Wesson Special.”

“My gun.” There was no use denying it, so Lamar didn’t even try.

“One shot nicked her arm. They call that a defensive wound,” I said. “Another one punctured her lung. The third one was at close range. Right to her heart.”

I set the autopsy report aside and moved to the next photograph.

When she died, Vera Blaine was wearing a dark skirt, pantyhose, and loafers. Her white Oxford-cloth shirt was open at the throat and stained with dark patches. The shirt was untucked, and there was still a sweater tied stylishly (for the times, anyway) around her shoulders. Her clothing was speckled with blood.

Most of the newspaper articles I’d read through earlier had featured the same photo of Vera. The eighties was not a kind decade, fashionwise. In what was probably her high school graduation picture, Vera looked like a smiling cocker spaniel who’d used too much eye shadow and whose hair was so gelled, moussed, and blown dry, it puffed out around her like a cloud.

In the close-up photo of her battered body, Vera looked pale and her hair was a tangled mess. Her dark eyes were wide open, her lower lip was swollen, and there was a smear of blood across her left cheek. She had about a dozen of those brightly colored plastic jelly bracelets on her left arm.

“I had a bunch of those when I was a kid,” I said, looking at the bracelets. The memory made me feel, in spite of the years, as if there were a connection between me and Vera. I guess that’s why my eyes misted. I knew I needed a distraction and needed one fast. Now that Lamar had discovered that I was a competent PI, I didn’t need him to think I was a crybaby girl. I found what I was looking for when I caught a glimpse of a page marked DECEASED’S PERSONAL EFFECTS.

Clearing my throat, I read it over. “Purse with wallet containing sixteen dollars and forty-seven cents. Makeup, lipstick, one package Trojan condoms. Hmmmm.” I thought this over, then got back to reading. “Black duffel bag containing fishnet stockings, a lace T-shirt, denim jacket with sewn on beads and lace, a black miniskirt.” The condoms made sense to me, the rest of it? I thought it over for a while before the truth dawned, and I whistled below my breath. “That’s weird, isn’t it? According to the newspaper reports, Vera didn’t check into the motel until around seven that evening. Her body was found a little after two in the morning. You were quoted…” I dug through the pile of newspaper clippings until I found the one I was looking for. “Here,” I held it up for him to see. “You were quoted as saying that Vera hadn’t requested to take the next day as a vacation or personal day. Which tells me she wasn’t planning on staying at the Lake View overnight.”

While Lamar processed all this, I kept right on thinking out loud. “Which means she shouldn’t have needed a change of clothes. Unless…” I thought some more. About the condoms, and the fishnets stockings, and the rest of that outfit, one that would have turned even the sweetest-faced cocker spaniel into a hot-to-trot French poodle. “Vera was obviously meeting somebody. I mean, why hang out at a motel otherwise? But maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe she had a little something going on the side. Maybe she was turning tricks or something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lamar’s rumble would have shaken the windows if the old mausoleum had any. “She wasn’t that kind of girl.”

“Her wardrobe says otherwise.” I looked through the list again, then looked at Vera’s picture. “She came and went dressed for the office. In a shirt she wore that day that still had a little bit of your blood on it from when you cut yourself. That explains why she never changed out of the bloodstained shirt before she left Central State. She didn’t have to. By the time her date”-I gave this word the emphasis it deserved-“arrived, she knew she’d have her party clothes on, so she didn’t care about the stain. And getting ready to leave, she changed her clothes so that when she got back home, she looked just like she looked when she left for the office that day.”

I narrowed my eyes, imagining Vera transformed into a vampy punk. “At the very least, Little Miss Buttoned-down here must have been planning a party. And my guess was that it was with some sicko who liked his girls even younger than twenty-two. That would explain all those jelly bracelets.”

Not to Lamar, of course.

“Jelly bracelets were a teenaged thing and a kid thing. I told you, I had some back then, and I was maybe five. I don’t think those bracelets were a wardrobe staple for a young career woman, at least not one who normally dressed like she just stepped out of the Official Preppy Handbook .”

Lamar looked uncomfortable with the whole notion, and I guess I couldn’t blame him. It must have been freaky to have to face the fact that his little secretary might have led a double life. His eyebrows plummeted and he twitched his shoulders. “It has to be some sort of mistake. She never looked like that at the office.”

“Well, I doubt if the killer brought that stuff with him.” Done with the list of Vera’s personal items, I tucked it away and drummed my fingers against the aluminum arm of the lawn chair. I knew I didn’t have to ask Lamar. After all, I’d just read the newspaper articles. But I asked anyway, just to gauge his reaction. “That’s what they said, right? In the newspapers and in court, I mean. The cops’ theory was that you met Vera at the Lake View for a little extracurricular hanky-panky, things got out of hand, and bang!” I slapped my hand against the arm of the chair hard enough to make Lamar jump.

If he wasn’t already dead, he would have been as white as a ghost.

He ran his tongue over his lips. “That’s exactly what they said. But they never had any proof. They couldn’t have had any proof.”

“Because there was no proof to have.”

“Exactly.” He lifted his chin and pulled back his shoulders. “I told you before-”

“I know.” I waved away any chance that he might give me the I-am-innocent speech again. “I’m just trying to think like they were thinking, and they were thinking what I’m thinking. At least if they were thinking that there was more to Vera than met the eye. You never got the vibe from her at the office, huh? She never came on to you?”

His shoulders shot back just a little more. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not being ridiculous. I’m being objective. Or at least I’m trying to be objective. So, being objective…” I stood and did a turn around the mausoleum, carefully avoiding that gaping hole in the floor. “Here’s what I think. I think this might have played out in a couple different ways. Number one, when the killer arrived, Vera’s date might have just left. She’s already changed out of her play clothes and she’s back in her everyday duds and getting ready to head back home. When there’s a knock on the door, she naturally assumes it’s her lover. After all, he hasn’t been gone all that long.”