Meanwhile, Jack was mano a mano with Milo.
“We’re shooting the breeze.” His voice sounded cockier than usual. “You want to stop by? We’re in his cabin. Just tell No-No to let you in.”
“No-No?”
I rode the elevator to Deck Fourteen where recessed lights illuminated coved doors that led to the ship’s most expensive cabins. The penthouse was farther down the hall. Deck Fourteen was also where Judy Carpenter was hung.
The Ninja standing outside Carpenter’s cabin watched me approach, his face blank as a mask.
“Let me guess,” I said. “No-No?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Jack Stephanson told me to stop by.”
As though hearing some password, No-No opened the door.
The deluxe cabin was not as opulent as the penthouse but had a small living room with a couch, two chairs, and a flat-screen television, which was being watched by a beefy fellow whose forehead hung over his eyes like a mansard roof. I’d seen him around the set; he kept the public at bay, some kind of bouncer. But we’d never been introduced.
He lowered his head with suspicion. The heavy brow cast shadows over his eyes.
“Raleigh Harmon, FBI.”
“I know who you are.”
He left it at that, giving no name.
“Is Jack Stephanson here?”
“In there.” He pointed to the closed door. “They know you’re coming?”
I nodded.
Milo Carpenter sat cross-legged on a king-size bed, a floral coverlet bunched beneath him like a ruptured garden. With both hands, he clutched a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey, half gone. Both bottle and man, half gone.
Beside the bed, Jack stretched out in a chair. Mr. Casual, still.
“Harmon, you’re just in time. We need a woman’s opinion.”
I glanced back at the man with the mansard forehead. He was absorbed in an ultimate fighting match on TV. I closed the door.
“We were talking about how unreasonable women get,” Jack continued. “Women take everything to the outer edge of reason.”
Milo’s blond hair looked dull, like rye stripped by a hard wind. His face was flushed, the workaday charm of it, the thing that drew men into movie theaters, was somewhere inside that bottle. Swigging, he offered it to Jack.
“Thanks,” Jack said, “but no drinking on the job.”
“That stinks, you should become an actor.”
Jack’s eyes sparkled. He was enjoying this. The creep.
“So you want to hear what happened?” he asked, before suddenly turning to Milo. “Oh, do you mind if I tell her?”
“Might as well.” Milo pulled a thread on the coverlet, gathering the print into a rayon bouquet. “People are gonna hear it soon enough.”
“It’s because of his affairs,” Jack said. “She found photos. Pictures of Milo with other women. Just devastated her.” He looked at Milo. “Mind if I show her?”
Still gazing at the bedspread, Milo shook his head and Jack stood, picking up a manila folder from the nightstand. I watched a tear run raggedly down the actor’s unshaven cheek.
I expected grainy surveillance photos. The sort taken at night from a great distance with a long lens. But these were color. In focus, well-lighted, and all of the women seemed aware of the camera. Dressed in Frederick’s of Hollywood, they relished the pornographic “art.”
I closed the folder, feeling disgusted.
“She found them when she was hiding my Christmas present.” Milo’s voice rasped. “Wasn’t much of a Christmas.”
“How many women were there?”
Milo glanced at Jack, who shrugged.
“What did I tell you? It matters to them.” Jack turned to me. “That was Judy’s first question, how many women.”
“It’s a legitimate question,” I said.
Milo gave a mirthless smile. “How many? How high can you count?”
“You not only cheated on her, you kept evidence of it.”
“You want to judge me? Fine.” The glass-green eyes were shining. “But you don’t know everything. We were living like brother and sister for years. She said she was okay with that. I loved her—” He stopped, seeing the disbelief in my face. “I did,” he insisted. “I loved her. That’s why I kept all those affairs secret. I didn’t want to hurt her. But she found the pictures, then demanded we go to counseling. And the tabloids ran with the story.”
“Marriage counseling?” Or rehab, I wondered.
“Sex addiction. She thought I had a problem.”
Jack cleared his throat. “He finally asked her for a divorce and she came apart.”
“Really?” I said. “But you go on a cruise together.”
“I filed papers,” Milo said. “You don’t believe me, check the courthouse in LA.”
“And get a room with one bed.”
Jack scratched his chin. “One bed. That is a good point.”
Milo swigged from the bottle, then drew his wrist across his mouth. “She begged me, okay? Said all we needed was some romance.”
“That’s what you call staying in the bar all night?” I said. “Romance?”
He glared at me. “I stayed in the bar because I didn’t want to sleep with her.”
“Very thoughtful.”
“Hey, I could’ve had any woman in that place, but I didn’t want to humiliate Judy. And not when she’s working on the movie.” He looked at Jack, trying the line again. “I wasn’t going to humiliate her like that. You believe me, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Jack nodded. “What time did you come back to the cabin?”
“Around three. I think it was around three.”
“Was she here?” I asked.
“No. And I knew I’d hurt her.” He was almost pleading. “I loved her, I swear. I just wasn’t in love.”
“So she wasn’t in the cabin,” I said, prompting again.
“I decided she was walking around, getting some air.”
“She got some air all right,” I muttered.
He didn’t seem to hear me. “I was going to tell her we’d always be friends and some day she’d meet a guy who really appreciated her, loved her the way she deserved. But I went back to the bar because I couldn’t find her. I had another drink, then got a bad feeling, and went to the desk to ask them to help me find her.”
The bedroom door swung open. There was no knock. A plain woman appeared. Brown hair the color of tonight’s baked potato; skin the color of fat-free milk. I’d seen her around the set and with the zombies tonight in Pharaoh’s Tomb. She always held a clipboard and reminded me of a winter sparrow, the way she quirked her head. Her voice wasn’t chirpy, though. It was flat, packed down like sandstone.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I was invited.”
She quirked her head at Milo. “We just had a scene.”
“One of my scenes?” Milo asked.
“A scene.” She pecked her head toward me. “She made a scene. At the crystal seminar.”
I glanced at Jack but his eyes were watching the Bird Girl.
“Sandy’s afraid the paparazzi are going to find out. He wants a press release so it doesn’t get blown out of proportion.” She lifted the ever-present clipboard, waiting for permission.
“Read it.” Milo dropped his head.
She looked at Jack. Then me.
“Read it, Betsy.”
“‘Judy Carpenter, wife of action-adventure star Milo Carpenter, died early Tuesday morning while on a cruise to Alaska with her husband. Mrs. Carpenter was a music producer of popular bands including recent breakout artists Stress Test and Peculiar Utterance. She committed suicide.’”
He looked up. “That’s it?”
“No. ‘Milo Carpenter is devastated by the loss of his life partner and wife of nineteen years.’”
“Twenty-two,” he said. “We were married twenty-two years. Our anniversary’s next month.”
She scratched her pen on the paper, then read again. “‘During this difficult time, Mr. Carpenter hopes his many devoted fans will respect his need for privacy. But the public is encouraged to post thoughts and feelings at www.milocarpenter.com. Mr. Carpenter plans to read every single note.’”
“What?”
“I’ll read them,” she said. “ ‘To honor his wife’s dying wishes, Mr. Carpenter will continue with his blockbuster movie Northern Decomposure, a sequel to his blockbuster hit Nice Death. The new movie will be in theaters later this year.’”
“We have a release date?”
She shook her head. “Sandy says keep it open. You never know with editing and production delays. I’m sending the release to the majors, Variety, ET. You want to take calls?”
“No.”
She pecked out a nod, then left.
Jack stood up. “We should get going too. Thanks for your time, Milo. It takes a real man to deal with something like this.”
Still playing Bad Cop, I waited by the door while the movie star got up to hug Jack. I was surprised when Milo turned to me with something like apology in his eyes.
“Sorry I didn’t tell you all this earlier,” he said. “This whole thing. I mean, she’s dead. You know?”
Yeah, I knew. And my father was murdered and I’d spent years dealing with other people coping with violent loss. In all that time, I’d never seen anyone who could’ve listened to a press release about their next business venture.
He waited for me to say something.
Anything.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure this has been quite a shock.”
Neither Jack nor I said another word until we had turned the corner and stood alone by the elevators.
“You’re buying this?” I said.
“You saw those pictures. Women throw themselves at that guy.”
“I hear envy.”
“Probably.”
He said it so calmly it deflected my blow. Which only annoyed me more. “Jack, I saw her. She wasn’t some weeping willow. That woman took herself—and her worthless husband—from rags to riches, literally.”
“And the pictures upset her. Can you imagine the pain she must have felt?”
“Then why bring them on board?” I hit the Down button.
“I don’t know. But I checked his bathroom. He’s got a monster prescription for Viagra and that stuff for thinning hair. She was taking Ambien, which might have made her spacey but not suicidal. I also checked the garbage.”
“Thank you,” I said begrudgingly.
“I don’t think he killed her, Harmon. He truly believes she took herself out because he didn’t love her anymore.”
“But sends out a self-glorifying press release.”
“He’s an actor.”
I reached past him, pressing the button again. “He’s practically dancing on her grave.”
“Actors are narcissists.”
“They lie for a living.”
“Have you ever seen one of his movies?” Jack asked.
“No.”
The elevator binged, then opened. It was empty.
“Watch one of his movies. He’s not that good a liar. And he’s a drunk. He would’ve messed up the story by now. But he’s repeating it word for word.”
“Rehearsed.”
The elevator stopped at Deck Twelve and two couples shuffled inside. One of the men used a walker. Jack and I pressed ourselves to the mirrored back wall. As the door closed, Jack leaned over, whispering in my ear.
“You’re dying to know how I got him to talk.”
“I can imagine.”
“I apologized.”
Staring at the numbers above the doors, feeling his breath on my hair, I decided this was the world’s slowest elevator. “Apologized for what?”
“For the way you treated him.”
I turned. “You did what—?”
His face was inches away and he was grinning. “They’re all narcissists. I told him he was right and you were wrong and he opened like a spigot. Spilled everything.”
Our next stop was Deck Ten, where two more couples got on. They wore phillumenist name tags.
“Five, please,” said a gray-haired woman.
“We’re all going to five,” shouted the man with the walker.
Jack scooted closer, making room for the woman on his right side. “Why did you get engaged?” he asked.
I stared at the numbers, wondering if the elevator was defective.
“You won’t tell me who he is?”
I did the calculus. The number of people onboard, divided by the number of elevators, then factoring in the disproportionately high percentage of passengers eligible for AARP—all the people who couldn’t use the stairs—and when the door opened, we had only reached Deck Nine. Two more couples shuffled inside.
No more elevators, I decided.
Since I wasn’t talking, Jack had struck up a conversation with the elderly woman next to him. She kept nodding at what he said, her trifocals flashing under the lights.
“And I’m heartbroken,” Jack was saying. “She went and got engaged to somebody else.”
Her wrinkled face melted with pity. “Oh, you poor thing!”
My face was enflamed, my lungs begged for air. When the elevator finally opened on Deck Five, the men turned, helping their wives out while Jack held the door for them.
“Hot dog!” exclaimed a man named Bill. His name tag said he was a phillumenist from Florida. Snapping his fingers, he escorted his wife to the atrium where a swing band played to a sea of white hair. “Listen to that, honey!”
Jack and I waited for the last of them to leave.
“Want to dance?” he asked.
“No. I want to know what’s wrong with you.”
“I can tell you over a drink.”
“Over my dead body.”
“On this cruise, Harmon, that’s not a joke.”
I checked my watch. Geert’s curfew was 10:00 PM—no “bothering” passengers after that. It was now four minutes to, and the ship docked tomorrow in Juneau at 5:00 AM.
“Did you call the Juneau office?” I asked.
But he was watching the old folks dance, a faint smile on his face. The music played like oscillating ribbons of sound.
“He’s an old pal from Quantico,” Jack said finally. “He said he’ll meet us at 6:30. Come on, Harmon, one dance?”
“He’ll have background checks on the movie people?” I asked.
“Harmon, listen to that.” He moved his head to the beat. “That’s ‘Mack the Knife.’”
“And this is Good Night Jack.”
His reply was cast to my retreating back and I almost turned around. It was what he said and how he said it.
“Sweet dreams, Harmon.”
But I kept walking, past the art gallery closed up for the night, and the pastry café, and though the music began to fade, I could still hear the singer looping back to the song’s chorus, going over those shark teeth pearly white, how Mack he keeps them outta sight. And as I headed to my cabin, I rubbed my hands over my bare arms, smoothing down a sudden case of goose bumps.
In the great white north in June, ten o’clock at night wasn’t really night. Around the edge of our blackout drapes, the sun drew a golden line, reminding me that the world beyond was still glowing.
Beneath the window, my mother snuggled under a white duvet, her back turned to the nightstand between our beds. The phone blinked with messages and a slip of paper was stuck under the phone’s base. Leaning into the window’s ambient light, I read my mother’s graceful handwriting. Where are you? Where. Wear. Ware.
I stared down at her curled form. Her breathing was steady, slow enough to tell me she was gone to the world. Her word riddles, the lettered solitaire, was no game. Her mind was fracturing, and I vowed to spend time with her tomorrow.
Picking up the phone, tiptoeing through the dark, I stretched the phone cord to our small closet and pushed the message button.
It was DeMott. And his voice sounded close, as if he was hiding here with me.
“I’m trying the room phone,” he said, “since you’re not answering your cell.”
At first I didn’t mind when DeMott began calling my cell phone several times a day. I was just grateful he agreed I should take this vacation by myself. But his need for constant contact began to remind me why I wanted to get away. The relentless questioning, the dismay when I needed solitude. The inability to appreciate FBI work. And now, with Judy Carpenter’s death, I had a legitimate reason for not returning his calls—but couldn’t tell him. It was an open case, and DeMott complained that I worked too much, that I didn’t know how to “just live.”
“Richmond’s on high broil,” he drawled. Weather was a favored topic, probably because nothing else changed at Weyanoke. Occupied by Fieldings since the early 1700s, his family’s plantation on the James River was a fabled estate, where Robert E. Lee once danced the Virginia reel across the walnut floors and where a Confederate cannonball still lodged in the dining room’s brick wall. DeMott wanted us to get married on Weyanoke’s lawn. But the battle over that was nothing compared to the fight over where we would live as man and wife. Just the thought of living at Weyanoke made me hyperventilate.
“And we’ve got fireflies at night, your favorite,” he continued. “I sit out on the porch and watch them light up the dark, and I think of you.”
His desultory Southern voice never rushed, never sounded urgent. The voice that turned weather into a narrative. And now, listening to him describe the night, I pressed the phone to my ear. I loved his voice.
I loved him.
“Tell your mama her dog’s happier than a pig in mud,” he said.
Madame, my mom’s dog. DeMott was taking care of her while we were away.
“That creature loves running these fields, sniffing out the rabbits, jumping in the river.” He paused. “Raleigh, you’re going to love it too. I promise. It’ll be different than what you think.”
I dropped my head. My heart ached.
“I’ve put pressure on you,” he said. “And I’m sorry. We don’t have to hurry. You just enjoy your vacation. I mean it. And when you come home, I’ll be waiting. I love you. Call me. Bye.”
The arid sound of a dead line rushed past, the nothingness of nowhere. And nobody. Still, I held the phone to my ear and calculated the time difference. Four hours ahead of Alaska, it was past 2:00 AM at Weyanoke. His sister Mac would say I had no manners, then harp on it for days. Yet another hurdle for us: Mac, his sister who kept me atop her enemies list.
Replacing the phone on the nightstand, I stuck to the bedtime routine. Brush teeth, wash face, and ignore that question begging for an answer. You can’t return your fiancé’s call and you’re relieved. Wasn’t that another bad sign?
I pulled the covers up tight and listened to the ship sliding through the Inside Passage. The ocean brushed against the side, whooshing and splashing, and once again I thought of Judy Carpenter.
I wondered if she was completely dead when she was hung there, or if her last moments were spent listening to this cold brush of sound, the silver splash of ocean as it escorted her to an end of days.