“Loresner ...” This guy tilts his head, trying to place the name.
“He’s not there anymore. Had a nervous breakdown the first time he shot his weapon in the line of duty. Now he sells lawn mowers at Sears.” I grab the mug from the waitress and bring it to my lips.
“Nice.” The kid adjusts his belt. “So Rancin says that you knew Lillian Smith.”
“I did.”
“How well?”
This is show-and-tell time, which I don’t mind, as long as he does his part. “I’ve known her six years. She visits me at work. We shoot the shit. She did the obituary for my daughter.”
Gersh nods, and if he already knew about Marcella, he doesn’t mention or show it. I’m glad. I’ve had enough apologies to fill a Greyhound bus. “When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Ten, eleven days ago. She brought me lunch. We ate. She left.”
“How’d she seem?”
I sit on the response as the waiter sets a mountain of potato skins, ham, eggs, and hollandaise sauce in front of Gersh. Okay, so maybe this place isn’t so bad.
My plate is as large as his, and is a recipe for clogged arteries and diabetes. I nod at Gersh with approval, but he is already tucking a napkin into the collar of his shirt and picking up a fork and knife.
“So?” he prods. “How’d she seem?”
“Fine. She actually seemed better than she had in the past. Healthier. She normally has this sort of dark gloom about her—it’s just her personality. She’s a quirky, weird type, like—”
“Yeah, I met her,” Gersh interrupts. “Questioned her about the Axe sister investigation. She’d been a bit obsessive with that family.”
That’s interesting news, though I’m not entirely surprised. Lillian had an addictive personality. During the early days after Marcella, before I left the force, before I started working at the cemetery, Lillian used to come by my house with a handle of whiskey, or vodka, or gin. We’d lie in Marcella’s bed and pass the bottle between us, and she wouldn’t say anything; she’d just lie there and give me liquor and company if I needed to tell a story, or be an asshole, or bend over the toilet and vomit. We became alcoholics together, though I suspected that Lillian had already been pretty far down that path. She was better at hiding it, and may have gotten a handle on it. I hadn’t seen her drunk in a few years.
“You ever met the husband?” Gersh pierces a stack of potato and ham.
“Yeah, once. He showed up to pick up Lillian. We were high—she had bought a roach from someone, and we were in a shitty apartmentthat I moved into after my house was repossessed. She was on the couch and I was on my bed, and we were laughing about something about giraffes, and he walked in the front door. Didn’t knock or anything. He just walked in, told her to stand up, and he pointed to the door, the way you’d do to a dog. ‘Out,’ he said. ‘Out.’”
I shrug. “And she just stood up and stumbled out. Didn’t look at me, didn’t say shit to me. And I didn’t see her again for two or three weeks.”
“Really?” He sets down his fork and gives me his full attention. “Did you get the sense that she was abused by him?”
I consider the idea. “No. If I had, I would have stepped in. I mean, I would have tried, given the state I was in.” I struggle for a way to describe what that dynamic had been like. “I viewed it more like she was a kid—and he was a parent. Controlling, yes. But it was with care and love. At least, that’s how I saw it. You have to realize, I only met him that one time. She rarely mentioned him after that.” I straighten, irritated with myself for just now remembering the last time Lillian had mentioned her husband. “She thought he was having an affair. Was worried about it.”
The detective doesn’t react, his jowls moving in uninterrupted cadence as he chews. “You know with who?”
“She didn’t say. I don’t think she had any proof. Just a gut feeling.”
I should have brought it up the last time I saw her. Should have been focused on something other than myself. I pull my plate closer and unwrap my silverware, ignoring the stab of guilt. “So what do you know about it? Was he?”
CHAPTER 56
MIKE
I do a slow and careful inventory of the liquor safe. The lock is clean, with no evidence of picking. I line up the liquor in very precise rows and check the labels of each twice. There is an expected amount of rums, vodkas, tequilas, and gins. While there might be a bottle missing here or there, or missing amounts from this one or that, that is expected, especially with Lillian’s occasional spikes in drinking. But the one bottle that is always there, the one that Lillian hasnevertouched, because tradition, ceremony, is one of her sticking points—it and its box are gone.
I didn’t purchase the bottle to use as a hiding place. The original purchase was entirely innocent. We had taken a vacation at a time when I had been particularly in love with her, her fragility after the miscarriage triggering a protective bubble of rare emotion. Walking home from dinner, we’d passed an upscale wine and liquor boutique and walked in.
The bottle was a special edition, one that the salesperson had promised would appreciate nicely in value and taste, as long as it was kept in a climate-controlled location. And that night, tucking it away in our suitcase, we’d made plans to open it on the evening of our twentieth anniversary and toast to our future.
I’m trying not to panic, because reckless emotion doesn’t help anything. I pull out a padded chair and sit, needing to think this through. The only people who know where the key to the cabinet is are Lillian and I. I certainly hadn’t taken the bottle, which leaves Lillian. Normally, I would track down my wife and question her within an inch of her life, but—thanks to recent events—that’s no longer possible.
So I do the next best thing and pull the camera footage.