Death Before Facebook

it open. Lenore’s phone was ringing. “Check the house—make sure the baby’s okay,” she said to the uniform and stared hypnotized at the phone. She knew she shouldn’t touch it, in fact could wait for the machine to pick up the call, but something told her it was important. She felt in her jacket pocket, retrieved a wadded-up tissue, and used it to grab the receiver. “Hello?”
    “Lenore. Thank God.” It was a familiar voice, but she couldn’t place it.
    “Who’s this?”
    “Skip? What are you doing there? This is Layne.”
    “Hang on a minute, will you?”
    Though she knew the uniform was perfectly competent, she went to check on the baby, who was sleeping peacefully through the noise—she’d probably had a lot of experience at it.
    Returning to the living room, she picked up the phone. “What’s up, Layne? It’s two A.M. ” She never said “What’s up”; thought it the rudest phrase in the English language. But “rude” would have been a gross understatement in describing her mood—and she hadn’t even seen the body.
    “Oh, shit—is everything all right?”
    “Goddammit, Layne, this is no time to play games. Why the hell are you calling Lenore at this hour?”
    “She left a suicide note on the TOWN. Is she all right?”
    “What conference?”
    “Is she all right, Skip?”
    “Just tell me where the goddamn post is!”
    “There’s no need to shout at me. If you feel like being polite you can call me back.” He hung up, leaving Skip staring at the phone as if it had mooed.
    She hated herself when she fell into bullying; this was what gave cops a bad name. But the pressure sometimes got to her. Like the combination of Pearce’s inconceivably stupid performance and her distress at Lenore’s death (if it was she who was dead).
    She went out to look at the body, thinking that Jimmy Dee must have seen something in Layne that she hadn’t—anybody who could stand up to an angry cop could probably stand up to Dee-Dee, and that was going some.
    There was a sea-green garment of some kind floating in the pool. The body had been hauled up on the side in a futile rescue attempt and it was indeed Lenore—Lenore wearing only a black garter belt, black mesh stockings, and a rope around her ankle, the other end of which was tied through a cement block.
    The officer who had pulled her out—the first one’s partner—was sitting in one of the white chairs, drenched, she saw now, probably freezing, and trying to collect himself.
    “She was just standing in the water,” he said. “See, the light’s on”—he pointed to the backyard light—“so you could see real good. Just the top of her head, her forehead, almost down to her eyes, sticking out. Then when you got close you saw the garter belt and everything—spookiest thing I ever saw in my life.”
    Skip saw that the rope on Lenore’s ankle was a couple of feet long, so that if she happened to float up instead of sideways, indeed she would have been standing in the water.
    “I’ve got a blanket in my car,” she said, and gave him the key, upset at leaving the baby. She didn’t know the other officer. What if Caitlin woke up? Would he know how to take care of her? “When you’ve got it,” she said, “get on your radio and call the dispatcher. Say we need the coroner and the crime lab, and another car to take a baby to Juvenile.”
    Caitlin was still sleeping. Skip spoke to the first patrolman: “If she wakes up, can you take care of her?”
    He gave her an Irish grin. “Are you kidding? I’ve got three kids.”
    She took a quick look around the house, saw that a bottle of bourbon and a wine bottle stood on the kitchen counter. Someone had dipped into the bourbon—about a cup was missing—and had all but demolished the wine. There were three glasses here—a wineglass and two tumblers, suitable for serving bourbon—as if Lenore had had two guests.
    Her computer was set up in a small room in the back, still on—the screen indicated she’d been disconnected from the TOWN. Taped to her hard drive was a bit of yellowed, scruffy-looking paper with a gibberish word written on it in ink: “EtiDorhPa.”
    Skip was dying to get started with that computer, but she couldn’t disturb a crime scene. The best use of her time right now was probably to get Pearce’s story.
    “I’m going to go talk to the witness,” she told the patrolman.
    Pearce was still in the car. Skip, considerably calmer than she had been half an hour