Death Before Facebook

Don’t you love it when it’s like this?”
    It was a rhetorical question. Skip said, “Listen, I was just wondering about something. Do you think Marguerite and Mike Kavanagh might have been involved before Leighton was killed?”
    Honey cocked her head. “Well, I never got that impression. Honestly, I’d be more inclined to suspect Pearce of being involved with her.”
    “Seriously? I mean, you’re not just carrying on?”
    “Oh, maybe I am—I don’t know.”
    “Were you ever with Pearce when Marguerite broke dates, or arrived late or anything?”
    She thought again. “Not that I can recall.” She shrugged. “She came, she had fun, she flirted. The only thing is, Pearce had a great big letch for her.”
    “Which she returned?”
    “I sure think she might have.”
    “Did you have any reason to think that?”
    “Once I found a strange phone number in one of his pockets. I sort of couldn’t resist calling. It was some bar where she liked to hang out. Then, too, I didn’t always know what he was doing. He worked late a lot. And sometimes when the three of us would be together, Marguerite would go to the ladies’ room and Pearce would go for cigarettes. And they’d both be gone a long time. I mean, a real long time.”
    “Suspicious.”
    “Uh-huh. Like I said.”
    “Thanks, Honey.” Skip wondered why Honey was trying so hard to incriminate the ex she said she was on good terms with.
    It was starting to get dark and she realized she hadn’t eaten lunch. It was Saturday night and she had no plans.
    But no problem—Jimmy Dee would feed her. She tried not to feel guilty about intruding, knowing he truly wanted her there. She stopped briefly by her office and found a message that warmed her heart: “Darryl called. He said how’s Sheila and would you like to have coffee sometime.” It was unsigned.
    She picked it up, about to stick it in her purse, when the phone rang. She grabbed it: “Langdon.”
    “You sound cheerful. It’s Layne.”
    Oh. Not Darryl.
    “Listen, I’ve been checking something out. I read over some old stuff I downloaded—some correspondence with Geoff.”
    “Yes?”
    “And I found something funny in it.”
    “Uh-huh.”
Spit it out, please
.
    “It’s a quote from Hamlet.”
    Hamlet. It was a word she’d heard not an hour before.
    “‘…the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.’ Remember how that worked? Hamlet’s mother married his uncle too soon after his father’s murder—eerie, huh? I know because I looked it up today, but I guess when Geoff sent me the quote I didn’t bother. I don’t know why it’s any big surprise—that he suspected his uncle, I mean. But I could kick myself for not trying to figure it out at the time.”
    Bells went off in Skip’s head.
    What is this? Pearce mentions Hamlet, then Layne does. Things are getting awfully coincidental.
    Was a setup possible? Were the TOWNspeople trying to point the finger at Mike?
    She said, “How’d you happen to think of it now?”
    “I didn’t. I just came across it. I mean, I was looking over some stuff for you—to see if there was anything you could use. You know what else I thought of? I mean you probably thought of this too, but just in case…. you know what I realized?”
    Spit it out, Layne.
    He spoke in a lower tone. “The murderer must have put the cat on the roof. You know?”
    She had thought of that. It gnawed at her, too—that someone could be that mean. Could set Geoff up by tricking him into doing a good deed, use the man’s own kindness as the instrument of his death. Gang members might gun each other down, but it took a special breed of invertebrate to put a cat on a roof and wait around to ambush its rescuer
.
    “You
realize
how mean that is? How rotten a person would have to be to…
goddam
, it makes me mad.”
    He sounded sincere. May Jimmy Dee’s instincts about him were right. Still, what odd little bits of intel to call about.
    “Thanks a lot, Layne. I appreciate it.”
    “Say, how’s your friend—uh—?”
    “Jimmy Dee.” Oho.
    “Yeah. Jimmy Dee—uh—”
    “Scoggin. He’s fine. I’ll tell him you asked about him.”
    “Nice guy. Well, ’bye now. Hope it helped.”
    Layne must have spent the afternoon trying to find a reason to make the call. Well, good, Skip thought. He’d given her a song to sing for her supper. Forty-five minutes later, she was singing it, standing in Jimmy Dee’s kitchen, a glass of red wine in