Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

hadn’t heard yet. But from Chris’s sudden alertness, I knew we’d hit pay dirt. Yet when she finally hung up she hollered a loud and heartfelt, “Shit!”
    “What is it?”
    “You’re not going to believe this. It’s way too labyrinthine. You’re just not gonna believe it.” Long pause. “I don’t know where to start.”
    Kruzick said, “The bottom line, as you Yanks so crudely put it, would be ever so appropriate, Mum.”
    “She left the keys in McKendrick’s car.”
    “Shit!” Kruzick and I spoke together and then fell silent, staring into space.
    Finally, I said, “I think the shock’s worn off. You can hit us with the rest of it.”
    She drummed her desk again, something I’d never see her do before— an ugly habit, usually, but on Chris it looked good. She’d painted her nails a fetching Chinese red, and she was wearing a long-sleeved cream silk blouse. The long, long fingers, backed by silk-swathed wrists, tipped with red, were as elegant, even in her impatience, as a musical instrument.
    “Roxanne’s … how to say this … well, she’s probably carrying about fifty more pounds than she’d like to be. She wears glasses; she’s short; and she’s shy. Now does she sound like a Jason McKendrick woman or what?”
    “One kind, anyway.”
    “What a weird dude. I’m not kidding, it’s a crime what he did to that girl. She wasn’t making it as a freelance editor, so about three months ago she went down to the Chronicle and applied for a job.”
    “Don’t tell me.” Kruzick was rolling his eyes. “She met him in the elevator.”
    “How’d you know that?”
    “All the best lives are ruined that way. It’s something about the motion.” He wrinkled his nose. “And the slipping standards, of course. One day the Orient Express, the next elevators.”
    “Anyway, she was bowled over, she couldn’t believe the likes of him could possibly be interested in her , and one day they left her house for a drink— at her insistence, after she’d been screwing him for about a month— and then she didn’t hear from him for about a week and a half. Finally, he called and asked her if she’d dropped any keys in his car. Well, she didn’t realize she had mine, so she said no, but she’d missed him and could they get together soon. So he dropped the news that he thought the relationship ‘wasn’t really going anywhere….’”
    “Men are swine,” sniffed Kruzick.
    “Anyway, she fell into a decline, and things began to get more and more desperate with her work situation. Meanwhile she actually got the Chronicle job she’d applied for, but she couldn’t face McKendrick every day. Can you imagine? That poor girl.
    “So finally she decided there wasn’t anything left to do but go home to Virginia for a while and maybe try to find a job in Richmond or someplace like that. Anyhow, on just about the last day, she’d decided to treat herself to a movie all by herself, but the theater was in a neighborhood she wasn’t crazy about, so she was putting money and things in a belly pack when this little heart fell out of her purse— a piece of the key ring I kept my extra keys on, and she realized she must have had my keys somewhere in her purse. When she couldn’t find them, she knew she must have dropped them in McKendrick’s car. So she decided to call him to tell him he had to send them to me and also give him a piece of her mind, kind of let him know what he put her through.”
    “What did he say?”
    “Well, he was very cold and said he could certainly understand her position, or, as she put it, ‘my fucking position,’ and he was sorry things had worked out that way. And he took down my name and address.”
    “Eureka!” I shouted.
    Kruzick said, “So how was the movie?”
    We looked at him blankly.
    “I mean, was she late because of the phone call, or did she bag it, or what?”
    We ignored him.
    I said, “It’s over, do you realize that? Now we know why he had your name and address, and we know who had access to your car key.”
    “Yeah. The victim.”
    “How long was it between the time Roxanne said they weren’t hers and the time she gave him your name?”
    “I don’t know. I had the impression it was a week, at least. Roxanne had to pack up to move, after all.”
    “Well, he could have done anything with them in the meantime. My guess is he did one of two things. Maybe he took them over to some woman’s house— or even some other friend’s house— thinking