Death Before Facebook

have. As it was, she merely looked caught out. “Caitlin, I guess. I feel so terribly sorry for her, having to raise that child alone. I worry, I really do. And Caitlin’s such a sweet little girl; so sunny.”
    “What kind of group were you and Lenore in?”
    “Oh, just a sort of women’s thing.”
    “Social?”
    “You could say that.” She looked acutely uncomfortable.
    “You said ‘were’ as if the group isn’t still meeting.”
    “Did I? Well.”
    “But you are.”
    “Well, Lenore and I’ve become terribly good friends.”
    “Who else is in it?”
    “Oh, dear, I really can’t remember.” She looked at her watch again. “Does this really have to do with Geoff?”
    “I was wondering—why do you worry about Lenore? Does that have to do with Geoff?”
    Kit busied herself with papers on her desk. “I suppose you could say that, yes. Or it did. I used to worry that she’d marry him, just to be with somebody.” She looked up, straight at Skip. “You know, Geoff just wasn’t the sort you’d marry. He lived with his parents, after all.”
    “You couldn’t see him taking care of a baby?”
    “He was a baby himself.” It came out with a lot of vehemence. “Lenore needs somebody strong. That poor girl, all the things she’s been through… her mother’s dead and her dad disowned her, did you know that? For being a single mother. He’s a Christian, I guess, and an unbelievably nasty piece of work. I just feel so sorry for her.”
    She looked off in the distance and when her eyes met Skip’s again, it was as if Kit read her mind. She made a rueful little snorting noise. “I should mind my own business, I guess.”
    “Oh, Miss Brazil. May I see you for a second?” A young black woman, her hair in dozens of tiny braids, poked her head in.
    Kit rose with a graceful sweep, not even putting her hands on the desk for balance. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said as she left, not bothering to turn her head toward Skip.
    Skip stood and strolled to the window. Casually, so that it would look as if she were simply bored, she turned to face Kit’s desk and scanned it quickly. An ordinary desk calendar lay open-faced, inviting riffling. But there was no need—something intriguing was written on that day, Friday. “Full moon,” said the entry. “Outside, p.u. Suby 7 P.M. ”
    That was so good Skip turned back a few days, to Tuesday. That day, too, Kit had had a date at 7 P.M. On that page, she had drawn a star with a circle around it—the pentagram Skip had seen on the altar at Lenore’s. Just doodling, probably, but it gave Skip the willies. She turned the calendar back to Friday.
    She sat down, trying to make sense of it. In Satanic cults, children were sacrificed, weren’t they? Little Caitlin seemed perfectly healthy, but what about Geoff? Usually cults had men in them—if this one didn’t, maybe that meant something. Kit had been pretty harsh on the subject of Lenore’s father, and not all that lenient on Geoff.
    But that was ridiculous. A ritual murder accomplished by the pushing over of a ladder was too lame to contemplate.
    On the other hand, who knew what these people were about? Perhaps there was some strange initiation.
    Maybe Lenore was required to seduce a man and then kill him, black-widow style.
    Maybe Geoff knew something he wasn’t supposed to.
    Maybe he threatened Kit’s job, or Lenore’s.
    Skip shrugged off a shiver.
A little paranoia goes with the territory, but let’s not get carried away.
    Kit came back pushing up her sleeves, efficiency personified. “Look, I sound weird, like I’m fixated on Lenore, and I guess I am. I guess, basically, I’m a mother in search of a child to take care of, and she’s satisfying that need right now—she and Caitlin together.”
    She pushed back a lock of hair that had come loose. “I never had children because my husband didn’t want to. I didn’t go to medical school—which I also wanted to do—because I put him through school, then helped him get his business started. We had a deal—I’d support him for a while, then he’d support me. Only I never got to collect—we broke up over the child issue. I got married again, but by then… I don’t know, maybe it was too late. Anyway, I’m divorced again.” She shrugged. “So I need something to nurture and Lenore’s it for right now. I guess if she’d married Geoff, I’d have had three children instead of two. I don’t know, maybe I’m as crazy as anyone in a