Act of God

this conversation.”
    “Darlene, I’m sorry to have to open old wounds, but how did your sister die?”
    “How?” Nugent began to play with the ends of her hair, which were down around her waist. “The how’s easy. She went off the roof of her apartment house.”
    “Where?”
    “Down in Quincy . That was the Nugent sisters for you, both of us ended up living in historic towns, Barbra down by the Adamses’, me by the witches.”
    “Suicide?”
    “Not how the cops saw it. She was up there to sit in the sunshine, bathing suit and all. Two kids into their twenties, and Barbra still had a figure for it. Not like...” Nugent let go of the hair. “Anyway, she was up there on a weekday, by herself, and they figure she went to get up from her chair and pitched over the edge. Ten stories to the ground.” Nugent’s voice had become elevatorlike, no emotion at all in it. I said, “Before, you started to say ‘the how’s easy.’ ”
    “What?”
    “You said the how’s easy.”
    “Oh, right. The how is she fell like a hundred feet. The why is like a hundred thousand.”
    “The policy.”
    “Yeah. Or I guess fifty thousand, huh, since they never liked each other enough to get together and plan something.”
    “You think Darbra or William killed your sister?”
    “Right. For the money.”
    “But the police didn’t.”
    “No. There was one, he kind of swung with me on it. But the cops couldn’t do anything about it, and the insurance company had to pay, too, because there was no—what do you call it, ‘physical evidence’?”
    “And no eyewitnesses.”
    “Except the one who did it. Either could have given Barbra that push. Imagine that, killing the woman who brought you into this fucking world?”
    “Do you remember the names of anybody from the insurance company?”
    “Are you kidding?”
    “How about the police officer?”
    “You mean the one who was with me on it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Christ, no. That was what, five years ago? Let me tell you, five minutes after you leave, I won’t even remember yours.”
    “How about the name of the insurance company?”
    “Same.”
    “You don’t remember that, either.”
    “No. No, it’s the same company as now, as the policies on Darbra and Will-yum.”
    Nugent reeled off one of the big national outfits, which would make things both easier and harder. I said, “The police officer was from Quincy , though?”
    “That’s where it happened.”
    “I mean, he wasn’t from the State Police.”
    “Oh. Let me... No, no he was from the Quincy cops, account of I remember that’s what it said on his car.”
    Time to change the subject. “Can you think of any reason your niece would disappear?”
    “Not unless it had to do with a man. Darbra’s a slut, you could even see it in her as a kid. We’d go shopping or ride the train—she loved the trains, even just the subways like the Red Line from Quincy into Boston ? And you’d watch her, and she’d be watching the men. Any size or shape, age or color. She’d just watch, really like... concentrating. At first I figured it was because she never knew her own father, you know? She didn’t have one around the house—and my sister was real good about that, though my guess is she’d had her fill of men with her husband and how he turned out—but Darbra now, she wasn’t just watching them, she was... studying them, maybe? Trying to figure out what they were like, maybe what they liked. And she found out they liked her, and she became a real slut. Sorry, but there’s just no other word for it.”
    “Darlene—”
    “Hey, you know the difference between a slut and a bitch?”
    “No. I—”
    “A slut is somebody who sleeps with everybody in town. A bitch is somebody who sleeps with everybody in town except you.”
    I waited for her to finish laughing. “You know any of the men in Darbra’s life?”
    “Not by name. Not at all, in fact. I just know there must be some, nonstop and probably overlapping. The kids nowadays, they have an expression for people like Darbra. They say, ‘A-tisket, a-tasket, the condom or the casket.’ Thank God we didn’t have to worry about that kind of stuff in our day, huh?”
    “Right. You know anything about your nephew’s life?” The two vampire teeth gleamed at me. “And whether there are any men in it?”
    “Whatever.”
    “No. No, if anything, I like Darbra better, for all her faults, than Will-yum. At least with her there’s some... action, some living.