Death Before Facebook

agreement.
    Marguerite put her arms on the table and sank her face into the hollow they formed, like a kid in a schoolroom. Her shoulders convulsed with eruptive sobs. Sucking, asthmatic noise tore her chest.
    Cappello caught Skip’s eye. Loud enough for Marguerite to hear, she said, “Let’s just wait it out.”
    Skip nodded: Her thought exactly.
    They sat there a while, Cappello smiling a little, to all appearances perfectly content. Skip wished she were so easily entertained.
    After about twenty minutes, she gave up, decided on a different strategy. “I think maybe some coffee.”
    “Great idea.”
    “You, Marguerite?”
    Slowly, Marguerite lifted her head. Her face looked like an open sore.
    Marguerite nodded once, and Skip left, watching her out of the corner of her eye. Very slowly, Marguerite was starting to straighten her body.
    Heartened, Skip got some doughnuts as well. When she returned, Cappello was offering more tissues and cooing. It was a side of the sergeant she hadn’t seen.
    In another minute she’s going to put her arms around her.
I should work with her more often. She’s got a whole bag of tricks I don’t even know about.
    Marguerite grimaced at the sight of the doughnuts, but fell happily upon the coffee. Cappello helped herself to both. She broke her doughnut into halves, took a small bite, and chewed, setting a friendly, homey mood: just us gals around the breakfast table. She actually reached over and patted Marguerite’s arm. “Feel better now?”
    Marguerite nodded.
    Skip could only marvel. She said, “Sorry you’re feeling under the weather.”
    “It’s not your fault.”
    Skip and Cappello exchanged glances. Excellent. She was apologizing to them.
    “Look, I know it’s hard. But if you think you can protect yourself by not telling what you know, you’re wrong. This person is ruthless—he would as soon kill you as look at you. You know that Marguerite. In your heart you know that.”
    “You’re being ridiculous.” She spoke pettishly.
    She’s really a very childlike person. She’s like Geoff—she just never grew up.
    “Who was it?” said Cappello, in a voice like velvet. Brown velvet, Skip thought. Chocolate.
    Marguerite turned her face downward. She balanced her wrist on the table, but her Styrofoam cup shook violently. “Butsy,” she said. “It was Butsy.”
    She spoke so quietly Skip could barely hear her.
    “Butsy,” she boomed back, repeating it loud and clear.
    Now this was a development.
    Testing the waters, Skip said, “I don’t think so, Marguerite.”
    Marguerite frowned, the picture of a child who doesn’t understand what the hell’s going on.
    “I don’t think he’d kill his daughter.”
    “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
    “Somebody killed Lenore Marquer last night.”
    Marguerite gasped again, again made the shrinking motion, putting distance between herself and the officers. “Somebody else? Somebody else is dead?”
    Odd
, thought Skip. She didn’t say, “Oh, golly, not Lenore,” didn’t seem to care at all. She said nothing.
    Finally, Marguerite said, “He hated her.”
    “Oh?”
    “When I knew him he was just a crazy guy. But he got born again and hated Lenore for having a baby.”
    “That isn’t a motive to kill.”
    Marguerite sipped her coffee. “I don’t think Butsy is a well man.” Skip let the silence grow. Marguerite sipped some more, gathering her composure. “My husband and Butsy are partners. Butsy is… unstable.”
    Unlike you
. It amazed Skip how quick people were to throw around accusations of mental problems.
    She said, “Did you love him?”
    Marguerite considered. “The energy that he now puts into hatred and fanaticism, he used to put into…” Skip waited.
    She’ll say “loving.” She’ll try to convince me what a great guy he was
.
    Marguerite looked her full in the face. “Sex,” she said, coolly.
    “And Leighton?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I guess if you were so interested in sex, you weren’t getting it from Leighton.”
    Marguerite stared at the wall, but her eyes seemed to look through it as if she were seeing something on the horizon. “He used to handcuff me. He tied me up. He turned me over and sodomized me. He held my wrists above my head and made me stand against a wall. Leighton’s problem wasn’t lack of energy.”
    “Real violent sort of guy.”
    Marguerite nodded. “A regular sweetheart.”
    “It sounds as if he considered women personal