Noah backtracked a few blocks on Mago Vista and pulled into a Denny's restaurant. From the telephone booth outside he called Overpeck at Dowey's condo.683Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWGvwkRHxFO
"I did the pizza thing first," Overpeck said. "Pittman's pizza hunch came right down on target. She ordered a pepperoni and green olive from Muccio's Pizzeria around the corner here. They had a FasFax copy of the order coming in at 7:28. I called McClure, and he said that something like that would pass through her stomach in about one and a half to two hours. According to the autopsy the 'tail' of Dowey's pizza was just about to enter her intestines. So it's likely she died somewhere around 10:00 on the same night she was last seen with Burr."
"What size was the pizza?"
"Right. Small."
"Doesn't sound like she was expecting company.....the dinner, at least."
"Nope. How was Nolie?"
Noah went over it with him briefly.
"Damn! Sounds like Lauralee had some goofy neighbors. We ought to check 'em out."
"Yeah, I plan to do that. Meanwhile I'm on my way downtown to talk to Violet Poole at Phenomenologies. Have fun in the neighborhood."
He quickly ate the shrimp salad with iced tea and then head back out Mago Vista to the West Jopak Townline where he picked up the Northeast Freeway again. By now the streets were blistering and the sun splintered a million different ways off buildings and cars, off chrome and glass and polished steel. Noah put on his sunglasses and muscled into traffic.
He couldn't get Carolyn Schultz and Adam McKinney off his mind. He had to admit that he had been relieved when they so suddenly appeared in the hallway and took charge of the unstable Burr. Noah had been in no mood to play nursemaid to the girl's easily provoked hysterics. And Shultz had been helpful, too, in putting Burr's relationship with Dowey into perspective. Helpful, yes, but in the end it was Schultz's perspective that Noah had finally gotten, not her own, and she couldn't shake the feeling that Schultz had a vested interest in just exactly how Noah understood the situation.
The Vertex Industries Plaza was a blue glass monolith of too many stories on the western side of downtown. A stylized trapezoid with rounded ends, its western face overlooked the green award of William Bonney Park and the overpass scaffoldings of the Desert Freeway under which the Sitting Bull made a muddy meander eastward on its way to join with the Colorado River on the fringes of the city. West, too, was a limitless stretch of green treetops from which the clusters of skyscrapers at Fortune Plaza and the uptown Easthead Estates rose up like cities unto themselves. On the eastern face the view grew hazy toward the fifty miles of roadways encrusted with warehouses, chemical plants, and steelworks, all industries capable of churning out enough effluvia to shroud the sunrise, which they often did.
Phenomenologies. Communications and Graphic Arts was on the 67th floor. It was a ritzy place with glass-brick walls and Plexiglas desks and plastic translucent room dividers in primary colors and secretaries in '40s hairstyles and sparkling lipstick. All the men wore tailor-made braces on their pleated suit pants and cut their hair short like the male models in GQ. Everyone was young, clean, and busy.
Noah's wrinkled business suit did not command immediate attention from the fresh-faced men and women who breezed through reception area, and the receptionist herself had a serious problem with myopia, which told Noah that she'd been sized up as a minority job applicant. He could wait, and he did. He gave the receptionist the benefit of the doubt and three more minutes before he placed his shield two inches in front of the girl's framed glasses and stopped a telephone conversation that didn't seem all the vital to the firm's fiscal well-being.
The girl's mouth stopped in mid-yap and she rolled her eyes up to Noah, who was looking down at her.
"If you would put that person on hold and buzz Jeanette Craig that she is wanted out front, I would appreciate it."
"May I tell her.....?"
"Noah Bain."
Though flustered, the receptionist did a superb job, and Noah thanked her and walked over to a leather sofa where he picked up a magazine from a palette-shaped lavender Lucite coffee table.
Jeanette Craig came down a long hallway of glass bricks that changed in shade from submarine blue to fluorescent white as it neared the reception area and made her look as if she were emerging from the inside curl of a long surfing wave. Before she got close, Noah could tell she was in her late 20s, built like the women on the cover of Cosmopolitan, and dressed like the women in Vogue. Frowning and preoccupied, her long black, hair temporarily pulled around over one shoulder, she walked briskly into the reception area and then stopped, brought herself back to the present, glanced around and caught Noah's eye.
"Noah Bain."
"That's Detective Bain," he said, showing his shield.
"Oh, my God," Poole said, raising one red-nailed hand but stopping short of her mouth. "Lauralee."
"Have you got a few minutes? I won't keep you long."
"I just heard, just this minute," Craig said, wrinkling her eyebrows. "A friend called...she worked with Lauralee just across the street. Violet Poole----she said just got talked to by the police---some guy named Overpeck."
Good boy," Noah thought. If Yung's girl had looked anything like this one, Noah could be sure he had questioned her at length.
"Could we go somewhere with a little privacy?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, sure," Craig reflexively reached out, a gesture of apology. "Let's go to my office," she said, and Noah followed her into the long watery light, his heels clicking on the dove gray marble.
Craig's workplace was at the far end of the glass corridor, one of the desirable "outside" offices that had a ceiling-to-floor view of the southwestern United States. She had a thick plate-glass desk with glass bricks to hold it up and behind her was a white credenza of similar design with built-in files and drawers. The credenza and part of Craig's desk were covered with artist's sketches and layouts of ad campaigns, and Craig shoved them aside as she sat down, her eyes on Noah.
"So what happened?" she asked without ceremony, planting her forearms on the glass and leaning across.
Noah gave her a quick outline of events, enough to satisfy her immediate curiosity, and Craig listened with an expressive face, reacting to the turn of events with genuine emotion, obviously finding the whole story incredible.
"Jesus H. Christ," Craig said when Noah finished. "This is too much!"
"If she was a random victim there's not a lot we can do from the approach of questioning her friends," Noah said. "But if she wasn't, if she knew her assailant, we're hoping her friends will be able to help us identify possible suspects."
"What? You mean, who do I think could have done this? My God, I can't even believe I know someone this has happened to, much less know who might have done it." Craig was wearing a linen work smock over a silk blouse and viscose suit skirt. She kept pushing back the baggy arms of the smock. "Look, if you've been talking to Lauralee's friends you've probably gotten a good idea of how unpredictable she was. She was a sharp gal, quick, intelligent, but she could be wacky. I mean, she was a free spirit, it opened her up for a lot of----adventures. I loved her to pieces...." Craig caught the unfortunate reference and looked embarrassed. "Jesus----anyway, but she was unpredictable. She easily could have picked up someone on the spur of the moment."
"Did you, any of you, often do that at Saffron's?"
"Actually, no. Times are changing, you know. We tend not to go around hitting on guys at bars, I mean, we don't; people still do, I guess." She looked at Noah's hands. "You're not married?"
"Divorced."
"So what do you do?"
Noah ignored the unexpected question, though it seemed to have been asked more out of genuine curiosity than flippancy.
"Did you know Lauralee's ex-husband?"
Craig nodded, a subtle look of distaste changing the pleasant shape of her mouth. "I met him once. The guy's an absolute waste. None of us could really feature them together. Totally out of Lauralee's league. Lauralee was---classy. Very sharp. Guys like that didn't even get close to her. But I understand he went way back, before Lauralee learned a few things."
"How did they get along?"
"They didn't."
"How'd you happen to meet him?"
Craig rolled her eyes, remembering. "It was a strange incident." She kind of laughed and frowned at the same time. "Some of us were over at Lauralee's one night, this was over a year ago, and he just showed up at the door. It was clear she was stunned to see him.....later she said she hadn't seen him in almost a year. He just pushed his way in. Nothing she could do about it. I didn't know who he was so I didn't know what the hell was going down. It scared me. He stormed right into the living room and Lauralee jumped up and kind of ushered him back out into the entry. We could hear them arguing. The strange thing was the way Lauralee was acting. She was always so strong, you know. Among us she was kind of the pacesetter. The New Woman. But we could hear them, and she was wheedling, trying to soothe him, calm him. They got quiet---I don't know, this sounds sleazy now, but we were all sitting there petrified, listening to this----they got quiet and we heard these, these intimate sounds. They were kissing, making out. It was crazy. Then suddenly----whap! He hit her. It sounded like an open=hand slap. A couple of us jumped to our feet, but nobody left the room. The door slammed, and he was gone. Lauralee ran down the hall to the bathroom before anyone could get to her."
Craig pushed aside some papers on her desk and found a pack of cigarettes. She lighted one, turned around to the credenza, found a heavy crystal ashtray, and put it in front of her.
"It was crazy," she said.
"That was it?"
"Well, you know, we tried to get things back to normal, went into the kitchen, made drinks, lighted cigarettes, started trying to clear our heads after that downer. When Lauralee finally came back into the room she apologized. Some of the girls wanted to talk about it, but Lauralee cut them off. It ruined the evening." She pushed at the smock sleeves. "All I could think of was those sounds at the entryway. Those were not the kind of sounds that should have gone with that little scenario. You hear something incongruent like that, it sticks in your mind."
Craig was clearly still bothered by the events of that evening. She didn't know what to do with here eyes so she turned and looked out the glass wall. The hand holding the cigarette was resting on the plate-glass desk, the wrist cocked back, the cigarette trembling.
"Do you know any of the men Lauralee dated?"
Craig shook her head without even giving it any thought and turned back to Noah.
"I don't know how it is with you and your friends, but with Lauralee and us, the little bunch of us that often go to Saffron's together after work, men just aren't part of the agenda. As participants, at least. We might talk about them, share war stories, but we're not interested in being with them in that context. It's just girl talk, You know, kick back and relax, say whatever the hell you want to, forget the minuet of the sexes."
She put out her cigarette, only half-smoked.
"So to answer your question---no. Aside from that one shabby little episode at her place that night, I know nothing about her men and their relationships. I hope it was better for her with the others."
Noah liked Craig. She didn't seem to have anything to hide, didn't seem to be walking a psychological tightrope like Schultz and Burr. But then, she wasn't as close to Dowey. Aside from that, Jeanette Craig seemed like a more straightforward personality and was just more confident as a woman.
"Can you characterize the way Lauralee talked about men when you were together?" Noah asked. "You said you shared 'war stories.' What were hers like?"
"Oh, I dunno," Craig frowned: "Nothing really sticks in my mind about it except that maybe she seemed a little more independent than the rest of us." She shrugged and smiled ironically. "You see, that's the trouble. I do think of her as the symbol of the woman of the new age: independent, a successful businesswoman who hasn't fallen into the old cliché power traps like a lot of women. Too often. I've seen women who've achieved a degree of success in the 'the men's world' stop being women and simply start acting like men in dresses, miming the old male models, being just as hard-ass, being one of the boys. But not Lauralee. She was true to herself, to being a decent human being. But then there was that episode at her house when she seemed like the sweet, suffering, battered wife. God. I guess I hadn't admitted even to myself how much that had affected me. Listen to me. I can't stop talking about it."
She stopped and looked at Noah. "Sorry, I didn't really answer your question, did I? How did she talk about me? I honestly don't remember any particular attitude in a sexual context. I guess she had pretty much the same views as the rest of us. I guess we're all generally less tolerant than maybe we used to be. We don't take the bullshit from them that we used to, demand more, not as willing to compromise."
"Did she date a lot? Do you know?"
"I always had the impression she got around quite a bit."
Noah watched Craig closely and asked, "Were you aware of your interest in rough sex?"
There was a blank expression followed by slowly raised eyebrows. "Rough sex?"
"We found photographs among her personal things, and some sexual paraphernalia. She was in some of the photographs, I'm sorry to say."
Craig swallowed. "Oh, God! I never heard anything about that from her."
"Aside from her ex-husband, do you know any other men in her life?"
Craig shook her head.
"Have you ever heard of Geoffrey Stewart or Curtis Hogan?"
"No, sorry." Craig paused and looked at Noah, finally realizing what all the questions were adding up to. "Don't you have any new leads on this? Are you still trying to come up with something?"
"We haven't had a lot of luck so far."
Craig hesitated for a second, then went ahead. "What----exactly were the circumstances?"
"She was strangled to death."
"In her home?"
"In her home."
"Did they break in?"
"Apparently not. She might have known the person."
"God. Oh, I can see....." She looked at Noah, nodding. "I'm sorry. I really wish I could be more helpful. Poor Lauralee. You just don't ever imagine these things, not in a million years."683Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxAGdale1kG
"I appreciate your taking the time." Noah stood and laid one of his cards on the plate-glass desk. "My home number is on the back of the card. If you should think of anything you believe might be helpful to us, please call me. Anytime. I don't care if it's 3:00 in the morning."683Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdy4RZdJRm0
Jeanetta Craig walked Noah back through the aqua corridor to the reception area, saying that she'd do anything she could to help, that she wanted to be available if there was any way Noah thought he could use her. She seemed genuinely affected by Lauralee Dowey's death and sincere in her desire to help catch her killer. She was the first glimmer of something positive that Noah had encountered.683Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiGbGh3gaHk
