The evidence list was a little more promising. I had the semen on Hattie’s underwear, and the forensic boys had emailed their report over last night, saying there was more semen in one of the used condoms they’d found at the bottom of the lagoon in the barn. I had them send it over for analysis along with the underwear and Tommy’s sample. No latent prints turned up on any of the other recovered items, which meant they’d been down there at least a few days and weren’t part of our crime scene. I included Hattie’s purse on the evidence list, and the business card from Gerald Jones that was inside it. His Denver alibi had checked out clean, but as a play director he was plenty arty. Not a bad candidate for L.G. He’d caught the red-eye into Rochester this morning and I planned to drive over there first thing.
What I really wanted was the damn murder weapon. We were four days away from the murder now, a hundred hours that the killer could have used to stash, bury, or clean it. Shel had finished dragging the lake yesterday and hadn’t turned it up. The farther away we got from Friday night, the less likely it was that we’d find it.
I heard the Nguyens stirring around six o’clock and gave them until 6:30 before I went downstairs. Mrs. Nguyen answered the door and waved me inside, calling something to her husband. Mr. Nguyen came out, all smiles and hospitality until I asked to see Portia, then his forehead creased and he paused before nodding and calling her out. While I waited I noticed the cat lounging on the sofa, facing away from me like we’d never met before in our lives. I turned my back on him, too.
Portia had her father’s height and her mother’s round cheeks, but the manners of neither. She barreled into the room in a pink robe with bare feet and hair flying out behind her, demanding, “Did you find out?”
Her father chastised her in their own language and she backed off a little.
“We’ve found out a lot of things, Portia. Which one are you thinking of?”
“Who killed her? Who killed Hattie?”
“If I knew that, I’d have better things to do this morning. As it is . . .” I unrolled the newspaper and dropped it on the coffee table with a loud thwack. “You’ve been feeling chatty, haven’t you?”
She shrugged. “They were outside school at lunch yesterday. I wasn’t going to lie to them. The curse is real.”
“You didn’t mind the attention, did you? And you sure didn’t seem to mind getting to play Lady Macbeth in Hattie’s place.”
“What are you saying?”
“All these nuts are going to come rolling into town looking for interviews now, and if you jump in front of the microphone like you did here, maybe your face’ll be splashed on newspapers and TV programs all over the country. Mighty nice for you.”
“Stop it!” she yelled and then started crying. Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen stood behind her, motionless. “I was her best friend. I can’t believe she’s dead.”
“If you’re her best friend, you must know things about her. Private things. Things she wouldn’t have told anybody else.” I waited until her crying quieted down. “I need to know those things, Portia.”
“Like what?”
“Who was she seeing before Tommy?”
“Nobody.”
“She didn’t have a crush on anybody?”
“No, she used to make fun of Maggie and all the girls that dated a lot in school. She called them ‘he-tarded.’ ”
She laughed a little and I couldn’t help joining in. It sounded like one of Hattie’s quips.
“Okay, no boy at school. How about someone she met somewhere else, like at the play over in Rochester last fall?”
Portia shook her head.
“Is there anything else that you know about Hattie? Something she confided? Anything that didn’t seem quite right?”
She shrugged and looked up, wiping her eyes with a sleeve of her robe. “I don’t know. I mean, I thought we told each other everything, but . . .”
But obviously Hattie hadn’t trusted her best friend enough to tell her about L.G.
“A couple weeks ago,” she huffed, hiccuping, “Hattie’s truck broke down on some nowhere road south of Zumbrota. I dropped everything to go pick her up—and I’d just flown home from the choir trip the day before—but she wouldn’t even tell me where she’d been or why she had a suitcase with her. She made me drive her to the Apache Mall in Rochester and said she had something to take care of. She wouldn’t tell me what and she wouldn’t let me come with her. I was pissed. I spent an hour at the Gap waiting for her to text me. When she finally came back, the suitcase was gone and she looked, I don’t know, like sweaty but happy.”
“What did she do with the suitcase?”
“I don’t know. When I asked, all she would say was It’s waiting.”
“What did it look like?”
“Small, carry-on size. Black with wheels.”
“And you don’t know where she was earlier that day or where she went while you waited at the mall?”
“No, her cheeks were all red and she was out of breath when she came back, but she totally changed the topic whenever I asked. She bought a sundress for herself and randomly bought me a shirt, like a total afterthought, then spoke like two words to me on the ride home. She didn’t even ask about my trip.”
The anger and grief were all churned up together in her voice and she kept wiping at her eyes.