Death Before Facebook

like fear than anger. I didn’t care, I was sure I could change her mind. I was going to sit there if the place caught fire in the next thirty seconds.
    Bu her hesitation, whatever it was, was immediately replaced by a warm light, the beginnings of flirtation. “This is Geordie,” she said “And Joyce. A matched pair.”
    “Pair o’ wot, I couldn’t tell you,” said Geordie. He had a vaguely British accent.
    “And who might you be?” said Marguerite.
    “Pearce Randolph,” I said wanting her to hear both names, to remember them.
    “Oh, my God! The reporter.”
    “You know my work?” I puffed out my chest a bit.
    She twirled her glass and looked at it, embarrassed “Well, no, I don’t think I do.” She looked up again. Defiant. “Just your name.”
    “Oh?”
    “From my husband.”
    I died a little inside.
    “My husband speaks of you.”
    It came to me who she must be, and I was overcome with regret—that I’d become a reporter, that I’d ever been born, certainly that I’d ever embarked on a certain fruitless investigation of police corruption. And yet, I still couldn’t believe the connection, couldn’t imagine such a thing. “Leighton Kavanagh?” I said “You’re married to Leighton Kavanagh?”
    He was a monster, this man. A great big ugly redhead with shoulders that would hold up an overpass, nasty penny-size freckles on his face and arms, hair so short he must have shaved it. But no belly; the man was in shape. And he was ornery—“the orneriest sunbitch in Louisiana,” according to some of his colleagues—some who’d given me a bum steer now that I thought of it, but still, if ever there was a case of Beauty and the Beast…
    She cupped her chin in her hand, using the other to play with her straw, flirtatious as you please. “Sure am. Beautiful little baby son, too—would you like to see a picture?”
    I started to stand up. “Look, I’m sorry I bothered you. I’m sure you—”
    “Don’t go,” she said.
    And I stayed.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    FEELING GRUMPY FROM lack of sleep, Skip was thinking with distaste that the case, despite its high-tech aspect, was actually hung with Spanish moss, steeped in the miasma of ancient fears and rages, the stink of memory, of acts better forgotten, never forgiven, of passion just below the surface.
    What I’ve got here is a geriatric unsolved murder,
she thought, and poured herself a cup of the pitchy substance they called coffee in Homicide.
The entire department couldn’t figure out who killed one of its own and now I’m supposed to do it twenty-seven years later.
    Her heart speeded up at the hopelessness of it, the panic it spawned, and yet she recognized a tiny simultaneous surge—the triumph of hope over common sense, the same thing that made a dog hare off after a cat, probably even the thing that caused Layne Bilderback to piece out crosswords. The challenge. The thrill of the chase. She might not get to the bottom of this, but she’d kill herself trying.
    The thing to do was get as much background as she could on the case and the major players. Maybe she could solve the whole thing from the office, like Nero Wolfe or somebody.
    Dream on,
she thought.
    Still, another cup of coffee would go down well while she made a few phone calls. She poured one and dialed her friend Alison Gaillard, who knew everything about everybody.
    “Officer Langdon. I was just thinking about you. I might write a reference book—Who’s In Who. What do you think?”
    “Why were you thinking about me?”
    “I need your opinion, of course.”
    “It’ll never sell—you’d have to update it every twenty minutes.”
    Alison hooted. “Especially in this town.”
    Alison and Skip had been sorority sisters at a time when Skip had about as much business belonging to a sorority as to the Ladies’ Black Hand Auxiliary. From a distance, she had thought Alison beautiful, shallow, brainless, and malicious; until she had become a cop and one day needed information. In fact, she had found her warm and bright—they’d made friends for the first time. And if Alison ever called in her markers, Skip was going to owe her big—she’d provided information on so many cases Skip had lost count.
    “You calling for a consultation?”
    “Mmmm. Usual giant fee, of course.”
    “It’ll be about Marguerite Kavanagh, I guess.”
    “Now how on earth did you know that?” Skip had perused the paper quickly, and there was no mention of Geoff’s death or the