“The papers portrayed it like you were partying without any guilt,” I said.
“Of course they did. I told you, I had tits and an ass, so I wasn’t a real person. A girl who had lost her parents couldn’t possibly be spiraling, unable to cope. Easier to write that she’s a slut. It sells more papers. The cops, too—they all thought the fact that I drank and partied meant I was evil. If I were a man, they would have had sympathy. They probably would have joined me.”
“Even Detective Black?” I asked. Detective Joshua Black had been one of the two main investigators on the Lady Killer case, and he’d gone on to be a detective for thirty more years. I’d seen dozens of photos of him from that time: young, dark-haired, suits with wide lapels and wide striped ties, a serious frown on his face every time he saw a camera. Frankly, he had been kind of hot. I knew he still lived in Claire Lake, though he was now retired. His partner on the Lady Killer case, Detective Melvin Washington, had died in 1980. I’d never had any luck getting an interview with Detective Black or getting any copies of the Lady Killer case file. According to the Claire Lake PD, the case was still open, which meant the files weren’t public.
“Black was a cop,” Beth said. “He still is, even though he pretends he’s retired. He’s always been too nosy for his own good.”
“I think cops are supposed to be nosy,” I said, thinking of Michael.
“It’s different when it’s directed at you,” Beth said. “When you’re sitting in a cold room in a police station with a bunch of men asking you about your sex life. I didn’t even have a sex life to speak of, as a matter of fact. I know the story goes that everyone was screwing like crazy in the seventies, but I had to be careful. I was terrified of ending up like my mother.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. I knew almost nothing about Beth’s mother. “Why were you scared of ending up like your mother?”
Beth raised her glass and drained it. Maybe I was imagining things, but I thought she was stalling for time, maybe because she regretted she’d said that. “My mother never wanted to get married,” she said at last. “But it was the fifties, and my grandparents were rich. They expected her to marry well. She met my father, and that was that. More of a business deal than anything else. And a year later, she had me. She was trapped.”
I watched Beth’s face. The pain etched on it was buried deep, but I thought it was real. I also thought she didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
“Where’s your bathroom?” I asked, just to get a breather for both of us.
“Down the hall to the right.” Beth looked up, and her gaze moved past me, to something over my shoulder. Her eyes were unbearably bleak for a moment, and I wondered what she was thinking.
Then she broke the gaze, looked at me, and held up her glass. “Get me a drink in the kitchen while you’re up, if you don’t mind. Grapefruit juice and soda, with ice.”
That voice—her I’m-rich, people-do-what-I-say voice—it should have annoyed me. But instead it didn’t occur to me to question her. I took the glass from her hand and stood.
Beth’s gaze moved past me again, and I had the uncanny feeling that someone was behind me. But I turned and no one was there. There was just the heavy furniture, the cold light from the windows, the old print on the wall next to the doorway to the corridor. I walked down the hall.
The bathroom had a beige tile floor and a heavy sink, the taps inlaid with turquoise. It was spotlessly clean, not a hint of clutter. I glanced at myself in the mirror, also framed with turquoise. I didn’t look any different than I normally did. I was tempted to open the medicine cabinet behind the mirror and snoop through it, but I didn’t. I dried my hands and left the bathroom, wandering to the kitchen.
This was also unchanged from the late seventies, though like the bathroom it was perfectly clean. The cupboards were pale blue, and the counters were dark brown. The laminate floor was cream. The windows over the sink looked to the side of the house, which was crowded with trees. From here you couldn’t see that end-of-the-world view, or the ocean, or the road. Just thick trees, as if you were isolated in the woods somewhere. I put the glass down on the counter and realized that this was where Beth’s father had been murdered, where a maid had found his body when she came to clean the house.