The Anything Goes Girl (A Brenda Contay Novel Of Suspense Book 1) Page 3

  She carried the wine out to her Camaro, got in and turned off Woodward, heading for Pleasant Ridge. It was true, she couldn’t remember anything about him. But it gave her no satisfaction. The past stayed with you, like clothes you weren’t allowed to change. You couldn’t just take it off and hang it in a closet reserved for past days and ways. Doing well on TV did nothing to make the past easier.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  Just after seven, she pulled the Camaro into Gordon Poole’s drive.

  She turned off the ignition and looked at herself in the rearview. Unruly, thick red hair framed her square-jawed, angular face. Men thought the hair was dy-no-mite, but from childhood on, she had thought of it as a separate being, an evil sibling with its own will. Her wide-set green eyes still looked to her as they had in her dresser mirror—a deer caught in the headlights. She was wearing the same denim skirt and green silk blouse worn to the last meeting of Gordon’s Victorian seminar. The point was to look like a student, not The Lightning Rod. In hindsight, it felt fake and very obvious.

  She got the bottle of Chianti from the passenger seat, swung out and slammed the door. Pretend it’s a crack house and you’re here to interview him, she thought as she crossed the lawn. Keep it light.

  But as she mounted the stairs, Brenda heard crying coming from inside. Gordon appeared behind the screen door, made a sign for silence, opened it and beckoned her in.

  “Is this a bad time? Maybe we should reschedule.”

  “It’s all right, it’s a neighbor, I’ll explain.” He took the wine and led the way into the living room. “If memory serves, you’re a gin and tonic person.”

  She nodded and he disappeared down the hall.

  Brenda sat on his well-worn camelback couch next to the fireplace. Flanking the mantel were floor-to-ceiling walls of books. The crying stopped and she heard muffled voices.

  It was a warm July evening. The windows were open, a sprinkler clicking outside. Aside from the crying, it felt like old times. Gordon had held his Victorian class here. In this lived-in room away from campus, she had first begun questioning her Anything Goes reputation. The books had been part of it, especially Thomas Hardy—so many lives controlled by the past. But mostly it had been Gordon and the house, the right mentor at a crucial time.

  Except nothing ever worked that simply. You didn’t figure out major life changes in someone’s living room, drive back to campus and convert everyone to the New You. Not with sexual graffiti and editorial feedback on toilet walls, including the non-sectarian chapel.

  She heard the kitchen door swing open and watched Gordon round the corner with a tray. She took her drink.

  “Charlotte Soublik, next door.” He put the tray on the coffee table, got his own drink and sat opposite in a wingback chair. “You remember Vince? I think he was a year ahead of you.”

  “The swimmer.”

  “Her son. He died two weeks ago.”

  Vincent Soublik, dead. Before transferring to Michigan, Soublik had been the main reason to go to swim meets at Davison Polytechnic. She had slept with him, just once, at a frat-house party during the Anything Goes days.

  The back door slammed shut. Gordon sipped his drink and shook his head. “He died overseas, in The Peace Corps.”

  The kitchen door opened again, and Elaine Poole appeared, holding a plate of cheese and crackers. “Hello, Brenda.” She looked to her husband. “Did you tell her?”

  “Just starting. Anything new?”

  Elaine hesitated. She came forward and set down the tray.

  “Don’t worry,” Brenda said. “This is off the record.”

  “Thank you.” Elaine picked up her own drink. “I know the Soubliks don’t want publicity,” she said. “Vince was a health worker on an island. In Micronesia.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Everyone says that.” Elaine put her drink on the coffee table, stepped to the wall of books and pulled down an atlas.

  “He got sick and drowned,” Gordon said. “He never radioed there was trouble.”

  “Vince Soublik drowned? He was an All-State freestyler.”

  “His parents don’t get it, either.”

  Seeing Elaine with the atlas, Brenda remembered Joyce Delarossa reading the paper at her desk—A local guy died on some island.

  Elaine returned and sat next to her on the couch. She broke open the book and laid it on Brenda’s knees. Tracing a finger west from California to Hawaii, she moved it slowly down the map, and stopped.

  “There.” The Pacific spread beneath her hand. Vietnam and the Philippines to the west, Central and South America far to the east. Elaine’s finger was pointing to a pin dot, and the word Pirim. “First, Peace Corps said he died before they could medevac him off the island,” she said. “Now they say he drowned. The body wasn’t recovered.”

  Over drinks, Brenda listened as the Pooles talked about the Soubliks’ pride in Vince. From the first, he had been a big success on his island. The day after arriving, he had used a public relations idea learned in training: carbonated pop for the kids. “He made it with soda-fountain syrup and an old-style seltzer bottle,” Gordon said. “The kind that takes a CO2 cartridge.”

  The soda had been a hit, speeding Vince’s acceptance on the island. He had written home about fishing on the open sea with a hand line, making friends with a research scientist on the atoll, and then a girl.

  As they talked, Brenda kept glancing down at the atlas, searching for Pirim. It was hard to find. Each time she did, the notion of someone she knew dying in such a place refused to register. It was nowhere, not a real place. A dot.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  Over dinner, the Pooles managed to guide the conversation to Brenda’s sudden local fame. The contrast with Vince embarrassed her—death versus tabloid trivia—but she soldiered on.

  “Market research says I clicked because I break the rules,” she told them. “I never studied broadcasting and they think that’s why viewers identify.”

  “That’s too easy,” Gordon said. “You just walked in and they put you on TV?”

  “Not exactly. I had no degree. I was taking whatever jobs I could get. I waited tables in a cocktail lounge. They had me tricked out like a French maid from a soft-porn video. Then I sold replacement windows for a company that went belly up. Then books at Borders. They fired me the third time I got caught reading.

  “So, I’m twenty-five, two months behind on the rent, borrowing from my roommate. That’s when I took a job in W-DIG’s mailroom. It was boring, but they left me alone. I could wear what I wanted and read after doing the mail.”

  Elaine passed the bread. “And you gave them some good ideas,” she said. “So they tried you out.”

  Brenda took a slice. “No, not exactly. A year later, one of the producers heard me trashing his news broadcasts. I did it all the time, but I guess he was just bored that day and stopped to listen. So, he’s listening out in the hall, I’m throwing mail in the slots, lecturing the other peon sorting with me. Telling her she or I or Forrest Gump could do better features on the eleven o’clock. He comes in and says ‘Fine, hotshot, let’s see what you’ve got.’ Then he dragged me off to an empty studio.”

  “To do what?” Gordon asked. “You had no training or experience.”

  “Just to interview him. He turned on some lights, focused a camcorder on two bar stools. He sits down and says ‘Go.’ Hell, I was sure he was going to fire me anyway, so I went after him.”

  “About the features?”

  “About his reporters. I asked him—actually, I demanded he tell me why they all looked and acted the same. Of course he had the politically correct mix—black, Latino, white, Asian. But you know what I’m saying. They’re identical. I asked him if the FCC required it. I told him I just wondered why all his action-live-eye-witness reporters never got mad. Or just took issue with the people they talked to.”

  “I thought they were supposed to report and not comment,” Elaine said.

  “That’s the boil
erplate answer. But the delivery system controls everything. Content, editing, camera angles. The talking head or voiceover tells you what to think it all means. Strangely enough, this producer didn’t fire me on the spot. He had a line item in his budget, he called it his wild card. He sent me off the next day with a cameraman. To some piece of nonsense called a tractor-pull, at the Silverdome.”

  Brenda cupped her left ear, pretending to hold a mike and stare into a camera. “‘It’s not clear to me how these really huge dumb machines relate to male sex organs, but they must.’ I was screaming my lungs out in the middle of all these overweight men going crazy. You couldn’t believe the noise.”

  Over dessert, she joked about taping the flashy changes being made to her opening graphics, and the new format. Elaine asked about the station’s infamous news anchor, Lou Stock. Brenda gave her the inside story on his well-publicized drinking binges, disappearances to dry out, his divorce.

  But the lead story that night caused everything to sound hollow.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  Before stepping out Brenda hugged Elaine, then Gordon.

  “Thanks for coming,” Gordon said.

  “Thanks for having me. I’m surprised you did.”

  “How so?”

  She again mimed holding a microphone, and scowled into another imaginary camera. “This is Brenda Contay,” she said. “Coming to you live from the darkest recesses of Pleasant Ridge.”

  Gordon smiled. “We’re glad someone who’s read Thomas Hardy is on the air,” he said. “Don’t be such a stranger, and watch yourself on that motorcycle.”

  “Will do.”

  She stepped out and crossed to her car. The Pooles’ big front door clicked shut as she got in. Next door, the porch light was on, SOUBLIK stenciled on the mailbox. It was a great closing shot. His family can leave their porch light on forever, but Vince Soublik isn’t coming back.

  Brenda sat a moment, trying to remember details of her one night with him. Drinking too much, they had shared a joint after a swim meet. She had done what she did all too often back then—taken a near-stranger by the hand and led him upstairs.

  She backed into the street and headed up the block, thinking about what had come after the tractor-pull at the Silverdome. Stan had sent her the following week to interview a family of seven living in a junked Blue Bird school bus.

  He had aired it—five kids with retarded parents in a squalid bus. The walls had been covered with pictures of Jesus, and roaches. Stan had aired it almost unedited, including her throwing up from the stench of feces. She cried, three-year-old Amy sitting on her lap, begging to go home with her.

  Brenda stopped for the light at Woodward Avenue. Watching the stream of cars and pickups pass by, hearing snatches of Hip Hop and country western blasting from open windows, she wondered what had become of Amy.

  BATON ROUGE

  SATURDAY, 10:10 A.M.

  Shirtsleeves rolled up and wearing a New Orleans Saints baseball cap, Lindbergh stood just inside the entrance to a dress shop on the second level of the Country Corners Mall. Caprice Thibodeau had come here from her father’s Chrysler/Jeep dealership and was now in the toy store next door, probably buying something for a niece or nephew. The phone book was full of Thibodeaux.

  “May I help you?”

  A woman clerk behind the counter was smiling at him. He returned her smile, shook his head and again faced the toy store. At some point, his Bureau I.D. would have to go. There were too many chance encounters with clerks and hotel desk managers, car rental people, airport personnel.

  Lindbergh had used his FBI credentials off and on in the seven years since his Bureau training. At Quantico, he had earned a reputation for practical jokes inspired by a knowledge of circuits and wiring. Another trainee had been on the receiving end of the last such joke. Cracking wise too often about Charles Lindbergh’s name had landed him in the hospital.

  After being de-selected, Lindbergh had applied to several private security firms. Even with a degree in Criminal Justice and a full year of Bureau training, every firm had turned him down. Affirmative action? Getting dumped by the Bureau? Bitter and broke, he had gone to Nevada and found work in gaming, where his Bureau training proved useful with deadbeat gamblers and uncooperative casino partners. Once established, Lindbergh had gone into business for himself. It paid well but was unpredictable. There were lots of headaches with the IRS.

  Caprice Thibodeau stepped out of the toy store.

  She had added a big box to her purchases. Lindbergh waited until she was halfway down the escalator before following. He had learned a good deal about his assignment. Caprice was her father’s favorite, his oldest girl. One younger sister, three brothers. All the boys worked for their father, Richard “Buck” Thibodeau. THIBODEAU SAVES YOU DOUGH! was plastered all over town, on billboards and city buses. Yesterday, the whole clan had eaten lunch together, the old boy holding court through the gumbo and iced tea, pumping sunshine up everyone’s ass.

  But Caprice Thibodeau had her own condo, five miles from daddy’s big house. She had caved in about the white boyfriend and come home, but still wanted her privacy. Lindbergh had seen it from his car, in the way she moved around behind the plate-glass windows at the dealership. Reserved at lunch, she had smiled but said nothing as her brothers passed the rolls to Buck and hung on his every word.

  Lindbergh followed her home.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  “Miss Thibodeau?” He held the ID up to the screened door. “I’d like to talk to you about Vincent Soublik.”

  She looked from the card to his face and held open the door. No need for jokes and small talk today. “Come in.”

  Lindbergh stepped in and looked to the living room. Expensive furniture, book shelves. An étagère was arranged with glassware and figurines. Next to it was a wet bar.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Could we sit down?”

  She led him into the living room. A cleaning woman had come Friday afternoon, preventing him from making entry. The single mother in the adjoining unit had spent most of the day on the patio with her two children. The other adjacent condo was for sale.

  “Please,” Caprice motioned. He took the chair next to the coffee table, and waited until she was seated on the couch. Stacked next to her were her purchases. The big box contained a keyboard synthesizer.

  “I’m afraid I have bad news,” Lindbergh said.

  Hands together, nicely turned out with jewelry that complemented her brown skin and graceful neck, Caprice Thibodeau listened with tears in her eyes as he told her what had happened. When he was finished, she excused herself to get water and went into the kitchen.

  When she turned on the faucet, Lindbergh got up and stepped to the inner wall. He studied teak bookcases flanking the glass-and-chrome étagère. The étagère’s shelves were fitted with accent lights that plugged into a socket behind the bottom shelf. On the top shelf, more books were held in place by carved onyx bookends.

  Still the water ran. She’d gone for a drink, but was still running tap water to cover her crying. Giving herself time to collect herself. A nice girl. Good manners, reserved. Not like the smartass law student. Lindbergh returned to his chair and waited.

  At last the water stopped. Caprice came back and sat again on the couch. Knees together, she clasped her hands. He liked her and it angered him. At such times he hated the Bureau for dumping him.

  “How’d you know about us?” she asked. “Almost no one did.”

  “Bennett Fox. He said Vince wrote to you from the island.”

  Caprice nodded.

  “Did you keep the letters?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I see them?”

  She hesitated. “They’re very personal.”

  “I understand. They won’t leave here, but if he wrote about his work, we need the information for Peace Corps. Have you been in contact with the family?”

  “I never met his parents, just his sister Beth. Once. She came to Ann
Arbor for a football game. I haven’t spoken to anyone from school since coming home.”

  “Except Mr. Fox.”

  “I called when Vince stopped writing. We were together five months.”

  “No other friends? Classmates?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Can you think of anyone else Vince might have corresponded with?”

  “No, I don’t think so. He hated writing, he was a lousy speller.” Caprice smiled a little.

  “How many letters did you get?”

  “Six. The last came in January.”

  “As I said, they won’t leave here, but I’d appreciate seeing them.”

  Reluctantly, Caprice stood, walked back to the foyer and disappeared down the hall. Lindbergh got up and stepped again to the étagère. The cleaning woman on Friday had tidied everything, dusted. Handkerchief out, he reached to the top shelf, slowly moved one of the heavy carved onyx bookends to the edge of the glass and watched it tip off. It dropped, the heavy, angular carved head hitting the carpet first. Support gone, the books slid to the right, sending two glass figurines off the end of the shelf.

  He was standing next to his chair when she returned. He pointed to the books. “Something gave way.”

  Letters in hand, Caprice looked to the floor and moved to the étagère.

  “Here, let me help—”

  She knelt, dropped the letters and reached for one of the figurines. He stepped to her side, counted six letters, leaned down and picked up the onyx bookend. As she reached for the second glass figurine, he gripped the stone carving, head down, and struck the back of her head with careful force. The figurines fell from her hand as she slumped on her right side. There was a sigh, a short neural spasm, and she was quiet.

  Lindbergh stepped back to the étagère, raised the stone bookend and tapped the accent bulb closest to the metal frame. It shattered. He wiped the bookend clean and dropped it next to the woman’s head. Taking a pencil from his inside coat pocket, Lindbergh probed the broken bulb, using the pencil’s eraser to bend the exposed hot filament until it touched the étagère’s chrome frame.

  He pocketed the pencil and moved back to the couch. Still using the handkerchief, he pried open the big box. He slipped the keyboard synthesizer from its Styrofoam package, carried it back to Caprice and plugged it in.