At ten fifteen p.m. on this Thursday the Nightwood Bar was bright with light and filled with animated conversation; Hill Street Blues was on the television set and the melancholy contralto of Anne Murray came softly from the jukebox. There were perhaps twenty-five women present, including those Kate had met only an hour after the death of Dory Quillin. Except for Andrea Ross.
Kate nodded to Maggie; then to Patton who had turned around on her bar stool to greet her with a mock salute; then to Audie and Raney who were smiling at her from a table where they were playing Scrabble; then to other women whose faces she had come to recognize in the four days since Dory Quillin’s death.
Kate went up to the bar, leaning across it to tell Maggie, “I have an announcement. Could you make it a little quieter in here?”
Maggie studied Kate for only a moment, then reached for a switch under the bar, turned the volume on the jukebox down to inaudibility, accomplished the same for the TV over the bar.
Conversation ceased; faces turned to Kate and Maggie.
Kate raised her voice to take in the room: “I wanted to let you know we’ve had a break in the homicide of Dory Quillin. We’ve made an arrest.”
A rising wave-like murmur was silenced by shushing sounds from Maggie. Kate braced herself for the reaction to what she would say next.
“We’ve arrested Flora Quillin. Dory’s mother. We have a full confession.”
Amid silence that rang in her ears, Kate looked into gaping faces.
“Save us all,” uttered a gray-haired woman Kate did not know. “Her mother?”
Patton leaped off her bar stool. “You arrested her mother?”
“Yes,” Kate said soberly. “She—”
“Her mother?” cried Audie from her table. “How could her mother—” Audie broke off, as if the next words were unutterable.
Kate looked at the stunned faces of Tora and Ash, of Kendall and Roz—of all the women in the Nightwood Bar. How to explain the Quillin family, the dark enormity of this tragedy? Yet how to spare these lesbian women, many of whom had suffered grievous pain inflicted by their own families? How to prevent the black shadow of Dory Quillin’s death from further staining this bar, these women?
“She went crazy,” Kate said.
“It’s the only explanation,” Maggie declared from behind her, to Kate’s gratitude.
Raney said, “I thought sure you’d tell us it was those creeps from the other night. You sure about this?”
“Yes,” Kate replied. “She’s confessed to this crime as well as the homicide of her husband, who burned to death early this morning.”
“Fucking shit,” Patton exclaimed amid other gasps of amazement and horror from all around the bar.
Patton shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans, hooking her thumbs through the belt loops, and rocked back and forth on her jogging shoes. “You’re right, the woman’s gotta be totally out of her tree. So—what else can you tell us?”
“What else do you need to know?” Kate returned, not unkindly. “You saw Dory out there in the parking lot, you saw what was done to her. What is it you want to know?”
“More, dammit. More than just telling us a crazy woman took Dory’s life away.” Then Patton shrugged and muttered, “Something to make us feel better.”
“Dory’s mother is dying of liver cancer,” Kate said. “Her doctor tells us she has six weeks to live, at the outside.”
“That doesn’t do it. Not for me. That doesn’t make me feel one goddamn bit better.”
“Nor me,” Kate said. “Dory’s death is a senseless, useless waste.” She did not attempt to keep the vehemence, the bitterness from her voice.
“Dory tried to talk to me about her parents,” Patton said mournfully. “I wouldn’t listen. I told her to just let the hell go of them.”
“Patton, I told her that too,” Maggie said, “and we were both right. I’m telling all of you,” she addressed the roomful of women in a firm voice, “we can’t choose our parents, but we sure as hell can choose how we feel about them. Why should we love anybody who doesn’t accept or respect us? Besides,” Maggie said, her voice lowering to its usual soft tones, “we have the power in us to make our own families.”
“This is some of my family,” Tora said, gesturing with both hands to the roomful of women. She added with a faint smile, “I like big families.”
Kendall said, “Roz and me, we go to the Metropolitan Community Church. You talk about a terrific big family…”
“Bookstores,” said a tall dark woman Kate did not know. “I found a whole gay world through all the stuff found in feminist bookstores.”
The room became warm again with the sound of animated conversation, a few tentative beginnings of laughter. With attention diverted from her, Kate said to Maggie, “Do you have a few minutes?” She pointed to a table toward the unoccupied front of the bar.
“Yeah. Let me get us some coffee. Roz, take over, will you?” Maggie reached under the bar to her switches and piped Diana Ross into the room.
A few moments later, the smoke from a Pall Mall drifting up past her white thatch of hair, an untouched mug of coffee in front of her, Maggie sat with her hooded eyes fixed on Kate.
Kate smiled. “I’m being x-rayed.”
“There’s a lot more to this business with Dory than you’ve let on.”
Kate replied with a shrug; she would not lie to this woman.
“Maybe you’ll talk about it one of these days,” Maggie said.
“Maybe.”
“You’re very good at what you do, Kate.”
Kate shook her head. “I often feel inadequate, Maggie. So much effort to accomplish what seems to make very little difference. What you do here seems a lot more important than what I do.”
“Believe me, you make a difference. We’re both of us strong women. I think we have to share our strength however we can. I think both of us do that.” Maggie shrugged, flicked ash from her cigarette. “I could never be a cop. I don’t think you’d be real thrilled being a bartender.”
“Maybe not.” Kate looked at her with renewed interest. She had been curious about Maggie since their first meeting. In the coming days, as she spent occasional time in the Nightwood Bar, perhaps she would learn more about this enigmatic woman. She said with a smile, “Strong woman, I have a favor to ask.”
“Sure.”
“Dory’s body is still at USC Medical Center. Other than her mother, there’s no one, just two relatives in different parts of the globe. I’ll tell you this, Maggie—Flora Quillin understands the dimension of her crimes. So much so that she’s rapidly moving into catatonia. She won’t be capable of anything at all very soon.”
“That woman shouldn’t have one thing to do with burying Dory,” Maggie said sharply, stubbing out her cigarette. “Dory should be buried by her real family, her own people.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Kate said. “Would you take charge? I’ll see about pulling the necessary strings on my end. Neely Malone told me Dory would have wanted cremation, with her ashes scattered at sea.”
“I’d have guessed that.” Maggie rubbed her jaw. “I was at a cremation service just last year that was done pretty well, everything simple and nice. I think I can get it done the same way and for not too much money. Neely doesn’t have a dime, you know. But we’ve saved up about three hundred for AIDS Project L.A., we can use part of that, I’ll put in some of my own. I’m sure we can raise—”
“Don’t do any of that.” Kate pulled her checkbook out of her shoulder bag.
Maggie picked up the check Kate had made out. “You don’t have to do this, Kate.”
“Yes I do,” Kate answered.
“I’ll get on it first thing tomorrow.” She gestured to the women in the bar. “I’m sure they’ll all want to attend. They damn well better,” she added. She tapped a finger on the check. “I don’t think I’ll need this much.” She grinned at Kate. “If I don’t, how about the rest of it going into the AIDS fund?”
Kate nodded. “Sure.”
Maggie folded the check, slid it into her shirt pocket. “You off duty now? Can the house buy you a drink?”
“I’m off duty and I’d like a double scotch on the rocks, but the house can’t buy it for me.”
“You’re such a hardnose,” Maggie grumbled, getting up. “Come on over to the bar.”
Maggie set Kate’s scotch down in front of her. “By the way, I haven’t seen Miss Deep Freeze in a couple of days.”
It took Kate a moment to remember that this was Maggie’s appellation for Andrea Ross.
“Seems real strange,” Maggie said, “after seeing her in here for hours every single day the last two weeks. I’ve been in this business a long time, that woman was sure as hell looking for something.”
“Maybe she found it.” Kate picked up her drink. “Here’s to Miss Deep Freeze,” she said.
As Maggie went off to wait on a woman at the end of the bar, Kate relaxed into her tiredness, listening contentedly to all the female sounds around her.
“So,” Maggie said, coming back to her. She raised an arm toward the banner hanging above the mirror: ALIVE WITH PRIDE IN ’85. “You coming to the Gay Pride parade Sunday?”
Kate shook her head. “It’s too well covered by the media. And patrolled by the sheriff’s department. I know some of those people—it’s just too risky.”
Maggie leaned across the bar and gestured to the back of the room, toward the parking lot. “Two nights ago you put your life on the line out there. You could get killed tomorrow doing your job. And you tell me you can’t go to a Gay Pride parade. Doesn’t that strike you as just a little weird?”
“Yes,” Kate answered, “it does. But—”
Patton came up to the bar. She pointed an accusing finger at Kate’s drink and held her nose. “Yechhh,” she said.
Then she swept off her yacht cap and bowed low to Kate. “Your officerness, Raney and Audie have challenged the two of us to a game of Scrabble. What do you say we go over there and kick ass?”
Kate looked over to where the two women sat smiling at her. “You’re on,” she said to Patton.