Death Before Facebook

coming out anyway. Tears flowed like a hot rain, in no time turning the tiny face a blotchy crimson, almost puce. She was out of control, and Skip had to remind herself that Geoff had been dead only five days; the wound was still open, still angry and dangerous.
    “Lenore, maybe you’d better sit down.” Skip looked around for a chair, but didn’t see so much as a footstool.
    Lenore’s body was still heaving. Unable to sit, she came out from behind the counter, pulled the door open, and made a show of gulping in fresh air. She had a tattoo on her ankle, a handsome coiling snake.
    Skip was in agony. Obviously Lenore couldn’t talk if she couldn’t even breathe, but it was killing her not to be able to fire questions.
    Two women starting to pass the store were obviously drawn by the face at the door. “Oh, look,” said one. “Let’s go in there and look.”
    Lenore stepped aside.
    “What’s this—a bead store? You sell beads here?”
    Lenore managed a smile. “And a few necklaces we make on the premises.”
    “Are you all right, dear?”
    “Fine—uh—allergy attack. Is there anything I can help you with?”
    The woman turned to her friend. “Steff, this could be just the thing.” To Lenore, she said, “I have this suit that has a peculiar ocher color in it and I just can’t find the right thing to wear with it.”
    “Well, let’s see. What color blouse do you wear with it?”
    Skip considered smashing all the display cases. Better yet, smashing Steff and friend. But there was nothing to do but wait. Ten minutes later, Lenore shot her a helpless look and said to her customers, “Could you excuse me a moment?”
    She came over to Skip. “I’m sorry, but I just work here, I don’t own it. I can’t afford to lose this job, I really can’t.”
    She had a way of making everything into high tragedy; Skip really hadn’t planned to cost her her job. But before she could speak, Lenore said, “Look, I don’t know anything, anyway. Why don’t you go see Layne? He’s Geoff’s best friend and he works out of his house. He has time.”
    “Layne who?”
    “Bilderback. He lives in the Quarter.”
    That was convenient: So did Skip. This way she could take a sandwich home and put her feet up for a few minutes between interviews.
    I could even meditate
.
    In the privacy of her car, she laughed. That was her little joke with herself—she would meditate if she could, she just couldn’t sit still. She was especially unable to sit when her adrenaline was flowing, as when she was fascinated with a case, the way she was with this one. Even putting her feet up would take a major effort. In fact the hell with it. She ate her sandwich at her kitchen counter, opening her mail as she did it. Wondering how Lenore Marquer had known about the autopsy report before she did.
    She ate fast, knowing she’d be sorry in a few minutes, but unable to concentrate on the task at hand, only on getting to Layne Bilderback.
    He lived on the border of the Quarter, on the downtown side of Esplanade, just off Dauphine. Not the greatest neighborhood, some would say, but beautiful; breathtakingly beautiful. With its tree-lined center divider (“neutral ground” in New Orleans) and its gracious old houses—houses that seemed almost alive, almost to bow and click their heels, they were so welcoming—it was hard to imagine a flourishing drug trade behind the walls, but the neighborhood had that and everything else; Skip knew because she’d worked VCD—the Vieux Carre District—now prosaically called “the Eighth.”
    A black man sat on the steps of the house Layne lived in. “How’re you?” he said, as friendly as if it were fifty years earlier and the races weren’t permanently angry at each other.
    Skip stopped to enjoy the moment. “Fine, thanks. But cold.” She shivered a little.
    “Yeah. My wife won’t let me smoke inside—she’d rather I freeze to death.”
    “At least she lets you come home.” It wasn’t that funny, but she and the man shared a big laugh, pals for a moment—the sort of moment you didn’t get in every city, she thought when she liked New Orleans, which she did right now.
    I’m actually happy
, she thought with surprise, and remembered guiltily she was on a murder case.
    “Does Layne Bilderback live here?”
    “Upstairs.”
    She pushed the button. In a moment a young white man appeared on the balcony. “Yes?”
    “I’m Skip Langdon—did Lenore Marquer call about me?” She was