Mistress

Another one I could answer many ways. What does he expect me to say? How about, Murder can be made to look like suicide, and suicide can be made to look like murder. I opt for respectful silence instead.

“So maybe not such a good friend.” He dismisses me with a pat on the arm. “Thanks for coming, Mike.”

I don’t say anything in response, though I’d like to. This guy just lost his sister, so he gets a long rope.

So! That was the family. Can’t imagine why Diana didn’t like coming back home.

The fortyish woman in the stylish black suit is still loitering at the other end of the room. She looks up every time someone new enters the parlor and studies him or her a moment. She finally catches on that I’m watching her, but she still won’t lock eyes with me.

Detective LaTaglia did the same thing at Mother’s visitation. Except she didn’t watch the other people entering and exiting the funeral home in Rockville, Maryland. She didn’t even watch my father.

She watched only me.

You’re a strong little boy, Benjamin. Eight years old and all grown up! Your mother would be proud.

She loved you a lot, didn’t she?

You loved her, too, right?

“They’re grieving.”

I spin around. It’s Emma again, the possibly pregnant high school friend. She likes to sneak up on me.

“The family,” she says. “Especially Randy. He can be nice, believe it or not. But it’s gotta be tough for him right now.”

It must be tough, Ben. Not being able to give your mother a proper Christian burial. They say your soul doesn’t go to heaven until your body is buried.

“Yeah,” I tell Emma. “It must be tough.”

But here’s the thing, Ben. We can’t let your mother be buried until we figure out what happened to her.

Do you know what happened to her, Ben? I kinda think you do.

Emma smiles at me, subdued for the occasion. “A bunch of people are getting together later,” she says. “Someone rented a room at Jack’s. If you want to stop by?”

I glance back at black-suit lady. For the moment, at least, she is gone.

“I just might do that,” I tell Emma.

Chapter 14

Jack’s Pub is an off-campus bar populated by grown-ups and students from UW who have decided they’re too mature to be hanging out at a campus bar. They would be the outcasts, the rebels, the ones who didn’t go Greek, didn’t play a sport, didn’t join the student council or any of the clubs, who lived off campus and made the decision to rebel before they knew what it was they were rebelling against.

They would be me.

Someone rented the back room so we could celebrate the life of Diana in the proper way, meaning with alcohol. In my experience-as an adult-wakes and funerals provide an opportunity for reunions, and despite the depressing premise for the occasion, people are generally happy to reconnect with old friends.

The back room is all brick, with televisions in the corners, well lit, full of maybe fifty or sixty people, with music from the ’90s-a rap song, then a dance song-playing overhead. Almost everyone in here is the same age. They are, presumably, members of the class of ’95 from Edgewood High School of the Sacred Heart, or their significant others.

I love that PC term “significant other.” It means you’re someone special-you’re significant!-but either you can’t get married because you’re gay, which nowadays is only true in some states, or you’re unmarried and for some reason object to the word boyfriend or girlfriend. The next time the person you’re with says, “I love you,” respond by saying, “You’re very, very significant to me.”

I slip between some people and head toward the bar when I hear someone say, “That’s the guy who worked with Diana at the PR firm.” I turn to a group of people looking my way, including Emma and Randy, sitting on a bar stool in the center of the pack.

“Is that right?” Randy says too loudly. He’s had more than his share already tonight. “Hey, Mike-”

Ben. My name’s Ben.

“-what was the name of that PR firm again?”

In Spy Game, Robert Redford taught Brad Pitt the fine points of espionage, including how to recruit foreigners to be undercover spies for the United States. Don’t lie to them, he advised Brad, because from that point on, that lie will have to be true.

I wave a hand. “I don’t want to talk business.”

“I don’t wanna talk business, either, Mike. I just wanna know the name of that PR firm you worked at with my sister.”