Tess Gerritsen: Peggy Sue Got Murdered

"Not with friends like you."

Her chin jutted up. "I was only offering her my advice. And sympathy."

"Isabel." He sighed. "I've known you a long time. We've shared some… reasonably enjoyable moments together. But I've never known you to be, in any way, shape, or form, sympathetic to anyone. Except maybe yourself."

She reacted with a wounded look. "What's gotten into you, Adam? I hardly know you anymore. It scares me, the way you've changed."

"Does it?" He turned and reached for the door. "Then I guess the truth is frightening."

"Adam! Look at who she is, where she comes from! I'm telling you this as a friend. I don't want to see you make a mistake."

"The only mistake I ever made," he said, walking out of the house, "was calling you a friend ." He slammed the door shut behind him, got back in his car, and drove home.

He spent all evening trying to locate M. J. He called the city morgue. He called Lou Beamis. He even called Ed Novak. No one knew where she'd gone, where she was spending the night. Or, if they knew, they weren't telling him.

At well past midnight, he went up to bed in frustration. There, lying in the darkness, Isabel's words came back to assail him. Look at who she is, where she comes from . He asked himself over and over if it made a difference to him.

And the honest answer was: Hell, no .

He'd already had a "proper" marriage, to a proper woman. Georgina was everything the social register required: blue-blooded, wealthy, well-glossed by finishing school. Together they were, by the standards of their social set, the perfect couple.

They had been miserable.

So much for proper partners.

M. J. Novak's origins, her hardscrabble youth, were, if anything, an asset. She was a survivor, a woman who'd wrestled the challenges life had thrown at her and come out the stronger for it. Could any of his friends, with their money and their platinum exteriors, have done the same? he wondered.

And then, even more troubling, was the next thought: Could he have?

It was something he'd never know, could never know.

Not until he was put to the test.

The phone was ringing when M. J. walked into her office the next morning. She ignored it. After all, it was only seven-thirty; let someone else pick up the line. Calmly she hung up her coat, slid her purse in the desk drawer, revved up Mr. Coffee for a six-cup pot. An IV infusion of caffeine was what she really needed this morning. It had been a sleepless night on a lumpy motel bed, and she was feeling as alert as a grizzly bear in January and just about as cheerful.

She found her desk littered with pink message slips, taped in a haphazard collage. Calls from her overwhelmed insurance agent, from the DA's, from defense attorneys, from a mortuary. And from Adam, of course-five calls, judging by the number of slips. On the last slip, the night tech had scrawled in frustration: " Call this guy, will ya?" M. J. crumpled up all the message slips from Adam and tossed them in the trash can.

The phone rang. She frowned at it, watched it ring once, twice, three times. Wearily she picked it up. "M. J. Novak."

"M. J.! I've been trying to reach you-"

"Morning, Adam. How're things?"

There was a long pause. "Obviously," he said, "we have to talk."

"About what?"

"About why you left."

"Simple." She leaned back and propped her feet up on a chair. "It was time to leave. You've been great to me, Adam. You really have. But I didn't want to wear out the welcome. And I had to find my own place eventually, so I-"

"So you ran."

"No. I walked."

"You turned tail and ran ."

Her spine stiffened. "And what, exactly, am I supposed to be running from?"

"From me. From the chance it might not work."

"Look, I have things to do right now-"

"Is it so hard for you, M. J., to stick your neck out? It's not easy for me, either. I take a step toward you, you take a step back. I say the wrong thing, look at you the wrong way, and you're off like a shot. I don't know how to deal with it."

"Then don't."

"Is that what you really want?"

She sighed. "I don't know. Honestly, I don't know what I want."

"I think you do. But you're too scared to follow your heart."

"How the hell do you know what's in my heart?"

"Wild guess?"

"It's not like Cinderella, okay?" she snapped. "Girls from the Projects don't have fairy godmothers to spiff them up. And they don't find happily-ever-afters in Surry Heights. Isabel gave me the straight scoop and I appreciate that. I'd be out to sea with your country club set. Too many damn forks on the table. Too many cute French words. Face it, I can't ski, I can't ride a horse, and I can't tell the difference between Burgundy and Beaujolais. It's all red wine to me. I don't see any way of getting past that. No matter how much you may lust after my body, you'll find after a while that it isn't enough. You'll want a fancier package. And I'll just want to be me ."

"I never took you for a coward before."

She laughed. "Go ahead, insult me if it makes you feel better."

"You'll risk your neck for an old car. You'll march into a damn combat zone without blinking. But you're too scared to take a chance on me ."

"You're a long shot, Quantrell."

"So are you. But I'm not running."

She laughed again. "You will. A few bumps in the road. A few rough times. It'll be easy for you to leave me."

"You must think I'm pretty spineless."

"I think you're human. Nice, but human. And humans always choose the easy way out."

"Easy?" Now it was his turn to laugh. "If I wanted easy , I wouldn't be having this conversation. And I wouldn't be asking you out to lunch."

She paused. "Lunch?"

"You know. As in a meal, traditionally taken at midday. I'll pick you up at noon. Restaurant of your choice."

"I can't," she said, glancing at one of the message slips taped to her desk. She suddenly noticed it was from the Greenwood Mortuary, in response to a call she'd made to them yesterday.

"Can't?" he asked. "Or won't?"

"Can't," she said, and folded the slip in half. "I have another engagement."

"Where are you going?"

"A burial."

Grim affairs, burials. Grimmer still is a pauper's burial. There are no gaudy sprays of gladioli, no wreaths, no sobbing family and friends. There is just a coffin and a muddy hole in the ground. And the burial crew, of course: in this case, two sallow-faced gravediggers, their hats dripping with rain, and a blacksuited official from the Greenwood Mortuary, huddled beneath an umbrella. Peggy Sue Barnett was being laid to her everlasting rest in the company of total strangers.

M. J. stood in the shelter of a nearby maple tree and sadly watched the proceedings. It was the starkest of ceremonies, words uttered tonelessly under gray skies, rain splattering the coffin. The official kept glancing around, as though to confirm that he was playing to an audience-any audience. At least I'm here , thought M. J. Even if I am just another stranger at her graveside . A short distance away, Vince Shradick also stood watching the scene. Cemeteries were routine stops for the boys from Homicide. They knew that two types of people attended victims' funerals: those who came to mourn, and those who came to gloat.

In Peggy Sue Barnett's case, no one at all appeared. Those who passed through the cemetery this afternoon seemed intent on their own business: a couple, bearing flowers to a loved one; an elderly woman, picking dead leaves off a grave; a groundskeeper, rattling by in a golf cart filled with tools. They all glanced at the coffin, but their looks were only mildly curious.

The rain let up to a fine drizzle. In a still mist, the burial crew set to work, shoveling earth into the trench. Shradick came over to M. J. and muttered, "This was a bust. Not a goddamn soul." He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. "And I'll probably catch pneumonia for my trouble."