Death Before Facebook

as cyberspace—somewhere exciting, a place more real than his own life, a land he could conquer, not a drab teenager’s room in his parents’ house.
    Skip knew her imagination was on overdrive, but the picture she got was so vivid it spooked her. “He must have been a very nice young man,” she said to Marguerite. “Do you mind if I look through his papers?”
    Skip could see by Marguerite’s face that she did but couldn’t think of a reason to say so. “No,” she said finally. “I guess not.”
    Skip sat at the makeshift desk. What she really wanted was to get at Geoff’s electronic files, the ones in his computer, but for now she contented herself with going through the things on his desk; slowly, ever so slowly. She wanted Marguerite to go away. And eventually, she did.
    Quickly, Skip checked under the mattress, fully expecting to find at least some old copies of Playboy. But there was nothing. She went through his drawers and saw that she’d been wrong about another thing—no death-metal T-shirts; tie-dye instead. Perhaps he’d been a Deadhead.
    She turned on the computer. There were files and files and files; she didn’t know where to start. There was a box of backup disks—maybe Marguerite would let her take these with her.
    “Mrs. Terry?” Skip went back into the living room, to find her hostess stretched out on the sofa, covered with the rumpled blanket, staring into space, the white dog at her feet. It thumped its tail briefly when Skip entered. She asked if she could take the box of disks and was given permission, rather desultorily; Marguerite seemed to have fallen into a fit of depression.
    “Just one other thing and then I’ll leave you alone. Can you give me the name of Geoff’s girlfriend? And his other friend—Layne?” She had found no address book, no Rolodex.
    “Of course. Lenore Marquer. She came over once or twice. Layne did too, but I never caught the rest of his name.”
    “Do you know where Lenore lives? Her phone number?”
    Marguerite shook her head. Skip thanked her and left, drawing in her breath when she stepped outside, grateful for the cool fall air, realizing only now how dead the air had been in the house, how sour and stale. She felt her step lighten, a weight leave her shoulders. Had it been that way for Geoffrey Kavanagh? Had the place felt as much like a tomb to him as it did to Skip?
    And Marguerite Terry? She was mistress of it, had made it that way. How was it for her?
    Geoff’s body had to have crashed hard—but having met his mother, Skip could believe she’d slept through it; she was barely awake when her eyes were open.
    But surely someone had heard something.
    She knocked on doors.
    The neighbor next door hadn’t heard the crash but had heard the cat meowing; had been awakened by it shortly before seven and had looked out the window, but had seen nothing—only a ladder propped against the house. She’d wondered why the cat just didn’t get on it and walk down. She didn’t hear a crash, but she had been gone for half an hour, between eight and eight-thirty, when she drove her husband to work.
    The neighbor on the other side had heard a thump and a clatter—but had thought nothing of it. She later realized the thump must have been Geoff and the clatter his ladder, but it hadn’t seemed grisly at the time—just a neighborhood noise. She thought it must have been slightly after eight.
    Unfortunately, neither of these neighbors, nor anyone else on the block, had seen anyone outside at all, much less anyone strange.
    No one knew Geoff or the Terrys.
    Skip headed to Mondo Video.
    If she’d expected Mondo Nerd, in keeping with the image she’d formed of Geoff, she was wrong. The manager was a freckled redhead, hair a quarter of an inch long, if that. He was broad-shouldered, button-down-shirted, clear-eyed, and looked as if he wanted desperately to be wearing a navy blazer but knew it wouldn’t look right in a video store. He was about five feet nine and made Skip, who at six feet was used to shorter men and could take them or leave them, feel as if she ought to hunch over to talk to him. He had the firm grip of a kid who’d learned it at a good prep school, and the last name of a dynasty. “Knowles Kennedy,” he said, applying the grip.
    Skip squeezed back, identified herself, and stated her business.
    “Geoff,” said Knowles. “One of our best men. Really bright and knowledgeable. Not real ambitious, though.”
    He was about