Then I told them about the sex.
“What?” Bud shot up, looking like he wanted to take a swing at me. I hadn’t even mentioned the aggressive part.
“God damn that Kinakis kid. God damn him.” Bud wasn’t in any mood to think beyond that, so I turned to Mona.
“Was she seeing anybody besides Tommy Kinakis?”
She shook her head once, a tight denial. “She’d been seeing him since before the holidays.”
While Bud stormed around the room, probably planning Tommy’s death, I sat on the bed next to Mona. She was working her hands one over the other, staring hollowly at the remains of the table she’d fallen into that morning.
“Did you know she was having sex, Mona?”
Bud swung around, all ears now.
“No.” Steady tears leaked into the crows feet around her eyes. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. “No, I didn’t know that. I thought there was something she wasn’t telling me, but I didn’t think it was to do with sex. Hattie was never starry-eyed about a boy in her whole life. Honestly, I never thought she liked Tommy that much. I couldn’t pin down exactly why she was dating him.”
“That kid’s got some answering to do.”
“Hold on there, Bud. We’re going to talk to Tommy again in the morning, and have him submit a DNA sample to test against what we found on Hattie.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t rape?” Mona whispered.
“It wasn’t rape. The medical examiner was positive. Don’t be thinking that, either one of you.”
Neither of them seemed able to speak anymore.
“I’m going to need to look through Hattie’s room. If you remember anyone else she was close to or in contact with, call me right away. Doesn’t matter what time.”
Mona resumed crying in earnest now and Bud went over to her. I left them alone and went to Hattie’s bedroom upstairs, without a word to the hens hovering by the kitchen doorway.
I was surprised there wasn’t much to see. A twin bed, dresser, and desk. She didn’t have posters splashed all over like most teenagers, just one picture—framed—of the New York City skyline above her bed. Her closet was about as messy as you’d expect but it was all clothes and purses holding lip gloss, bobby pins, movie ticket stubs, and loose change. Nothing that helped. Her desk seemed about the most personal thing in the room. The drawers were full of magazine pictures of subway stations, neon signs, and women walking down city sidewalks with little rat dogs tucked in their purses. I couldn’t find a diary or a journal, which struck me as odd. Hattie’d seemed like the type to keep one. Her laptop had a lot of stuff on it though and maybe we’d find something there. Jake could dig into those files with his computer tricks.
In the bottom drawer I found a program for a Rochester play where Hattie had gotten the lead. I remembered Bud saying something about that last fall. Scratching his neck, shrugging his shoulders as we winterized his boat. Kid’s a natural. Damned if I know where she got it.
Flipping through the program, my eye caught on a particular name.
Gerald Jones, director.
Now, why would Hattie be carrying, on the night of her death, the card and phone number of a man she hadn’t seen in over six months? A man she was connected to through the theater?
I smiled grimly, ready to put Jake in his place when I got back to the station. Look what old-fashioned police work turned up.
PETER / Saturday, September 8, 2007
SHAKESPEARE WAS one cunning SOB. I didn’t care much for his comedies, the farces full of village idiots and misplaced identities. I’d always gravitated to the tragedies, where even witches and ghosts couldn’t distract the audience from this central psychological truth: by our own natures, we are all inherently doomed. Shakespeare didn’t write anything new. He didn’t invent jealousy, infidelity, or the greed of kings. He recognized evil as timeless and shone a spotlight directly, unflinchingly on it and said, This is what we are and always will be.
Of course, right at this minute, I had no idea what my wife was.
“So Peter just found out he’ll be directing the spring play at school,” Mary said conversationally as she sliced through the tender breast meat of a chicken. She smiled at me, encouraging me to jump into the conversation, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything besides the chicken. It had been alive a few hours ago and now wafts of rosemary and cooked skin rolled off it, turning my stomach as Elsa and our neighbor Winifred lifted their plates for the entrée.
“Do The Music Man. I like the songs in that one,” Winifred ordered. She often joined us for Saturday-night dinners and usually I looked forward to the bang of the screen door that announced her arrival. She was wiry and opinionated and had all the strength of heart that Elsa lacked.
I shook my head weakly. “The principal said it had to be Shakespeare.”
He’d told me he didn’t care which play, except it couldn’t be Romeo and Juliet. Nothing suicide-related, he said.
Elsa smiled fondly as she scooped up some peas. “Lyle always likes his Shakespeare.”
“Remember when he had them do A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Will Davis’s bean fields?” Winifred scoffed. She glanced over and filled me in on the joke.
“All the chairs were set up on what they found out was a giant anthill, and before the first act was over, the whole audience was covered in biting ants.”
Elsa put a quavering hand on Winifred’s, changing the topic back to how she didn’t like Winifred living alone anymore. Having Mary and me around helped her see how much better it was to have support, she said. Winifred dismissed her friend’s concerns with a practiced flair and steered the conversation to the new furnace that was being installed in the town café.