Nolie Burr had not returned to work by Wednesday morning, and her boss at TechCube said that she had requested a week's sick leave. Nor was she at home. Noah found her on Paso Bajo, staying with Carolyn Shultz.505Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT3ka8JRluz
The three of them sat in Shultz's living room again, the late morning light throwing a long brassy streak across the dark terra-cotta tile of the living room that opened out onto a patio crowded with palms and plantains. Whether by chance or by an unconscious need to follow precedents, Noah and Burr sat in the same places they had occupied three days earlier, facing each other across the glazed gold tiles of the coffee while Shultz, not excusing herself this time, sat in a second tapestry armchair between them. Both women were dressed casually, Burr in white tailored shorts and a white safari shirt, and Shultz in a sarong, as before, and the top of a black bikini. And both women seemed particularly concerned with Noah's third visit in as many days. Burr was her usual apprehensive self, but this time Shultz, too, portrayed genuine concern. Noah thought it was a good opportunity to get right down to cases with them. He'd been too cautious too long.
"I'm going to level with you," Noah said, looking at both of them but settling his eyes on Burr. "I know that you and Lauralee Dowey were lovers." He pressed on despite Burr's round-eyed surprise and the bright pink flush that spread over her freckles. "I know how Lauralee felt about keeping her bisexuality secret, and I know that her ex-husband had been blackmailing her to keep it quiet. He's dead, incidentally." Burr's mouth dropped open. "He was robbing a liquor store and was shot. I'll have to admit that he was our main---and only----suspect. Now we're no closer to resolving this thing than we were when we walked into Lauralee's bedroom two days ago.
"In addition, I must tell you that a month before Lauralee was killed another woman was murdered in almost the exact manner." This time both Burr and Shultz reacted with alarm. "I asked you about her the first time we talked," Noah said to Burr. "Her name was Vicki San Felipe."
"I remember," Burr nodded. "But I've never heard of her."
"She was found in the Imperial Hotel on Bath. It was in the paper."
"Yeah, I remember that," Burr said. "I just didn't put the names together." Her expression was sober. "She was killed---the same way?"
Noah nodded and opened the manila folder he'd brought with him. He pulled out the picture of San Felipe, and the uncropped copies of the three black and white pictures of the unidentified woman with the mannequin.
"Do you know either of these women?"
Nolie was not as bright as she might have been, and when she got a good look at the pictures she snapped her eyes at Shultz, who pretended to take no notice. Shultz looked at Noah and shook her head in a small shrug. Nolie's face was as blank as a simpleton's.
Noah was furious, but covered it. It struck him as absurd that the three of them were sitting there playing charades.
"I'll give you my opinion," he said, "and it's the assumption on which we're conducting this investigation. There are a group of you," he included Shultz with his eyes, "who wanted to keep your bisexuality, or even your strictly lesbian, preferences secret, for professional or other reasons. You socialize among yourself in private, but maintain a considerable restrained distance professionally. Maybe you even compartmentalize your lives, some of you knowing the same women without realizing it. In any case, some of you also know, without realizing it, the man who has killed Lauralee and Vicki San Felipe. He's going to kill others. That's a guarantee, because none of you are cooperating with us and we don't have any leads. So he's out there, a husband, a bum, a lover, a friend, a hairdresser, a plumber, an executive.....whatever he is, and he's going to do it again. As long as you maintain this stupid conspiratorial silence, you're condemning another innocent woman to death."
Noah stopped and looked at them. Burr fidgeted in her cut, cuffed shorts like a reprimanded showgirl, her youthful breasts requiring no help to create a seductive cleavage, her permed ginger hair full and bouncy around her face which, even when expressing confused fright as it was now, was a seductive attraction to either sex. Shultz understood.
"Was the other woman bisexual?" she asked.
"We don't know." Noah was tired of the game. He nodded at the pictures. "She's the blond. We were hoping you could help us find out."
"I don't know her," Shultz said. Then she leaned forward and put a finger on one of the pictures of the unidentified woman with the mannequin. "But I know her." She looked at Noah steadily. "You're sure about this, about the bisexual aspect."
"I'm not sure about anything," Noah said. "That's what we think we have."
Shultz nodded and leaned back in her chair, thinking. The sarong had fallen open, exposing her long tanned inner thigh. She didn't bother fixing the sarong. Her olive face was framed by her straight bangs and the vertical sides of her dark, gray-streaked bob. Only her eyes and something about her mouth hinted at the years she had over Burr and even over Noah himself. She was clearly feeling the import of Noah's words, and she was weighing them in the balance against something else at which Noah could only guess.
"It's not exactly a 'society,'" she said finally, looking at Noah, "but pretty damned closed to it."
Nolie Burr reached for her Virginia Slims on the coffee table. Shultz pulled herself up in the tapestry armchair and let the sarong fall away from her leg completely now, exposing it nearly to the hip. The very edge of the dark triangle between her legs was visible above the sloping curve of her naked thigh. The gesture seemed to be a declaration of admission. Noah had caught her out, he no longer had a reason for deception. Noah wondered what could be going through her mind. Was she really so comfortable with her nakedness that she didn't care that Noah was almost close enough to touch her? Or was the intent of this display to draw Noah into a new eroticism? Or was her intent more selfish; did the titillation flow in the other direction so that Shultz herself was experiencing a very particular gratification from watching Noah's reaction as he found himself in the uncomfortable position of alternately averting his eyes from Shultz's exhibitionism, and unavoidably taking in the full, naked length of her handsome body?
"Lauralee actually started this.....group herself, five or six years ago," Shultz began, glancing briefly at Nolie before continuing. "She had been a sexually abused child who had run away from home when she was fifteen to get away from it. She lived in a hospice while she finished high school. She was smart, had spunk, and got a scholarship to go to college. That's where she met Ottie Needham and discovered her sexual affinity for other women."
Shultz paused as if she wanted to explain something then decided against it and went on. Noah thought about the drunken man she had heard swearing in Needham's bedroom.
"Lauralee recognized early on that this was one aspect of her life she was going to have to hide. That was when she started the prototype of the network. While she was in graduate school she met Ottie's brother and, for some inexplicable reason, married him. You know how that turned out. But Lauralee and Ottie continued their relationship."
Another pause. And the tapered fingers of one hand pulled abstractedly at one side of her bob. Shultz's fingernails were perfectly manicured though kept rather short with softly narrowed ends. Noah had never seen them with nail polish.
"Naturally I lied about how well I knew her," Shultz said. "We were extremely close, across the street from one another like this. We were lovers for a while, too, but we were too much alike. Anyway, Ottie had been her lover for years, behind Stanley's back. He was such a prick, so wrapped up in himself, he didn't even realize what was going on. And then one day he found them together. He used it against them from then on.
"Except where Stanley was concerned, Lauralee was independent and shrewd. She was professionally successful despite Stanley's hanging around her neck like an albatross, which he continued to do so after the divorce. So she started the networking system to enable the other bisexuals and lesbians to associate with each other while maintaining a straight life---if that was what they wanted. Many are professionals whose careers would suffer if their sexual orientation were known. Others are married---happily married, if that's not a contradiction in terms. They don't want to give up their families, but they still long for the kind of affection they can only get from loving another woman. A lot of society women." She nodded. "And you were right, the secret to the networking system is its compartmentalism. We don't use our real names when meeting someone for the first time, and some of us may never use our real names. If we keep names and numbers, both are coded. Each woman is responsible for her own coding system."
"What was Lauralee's?"
"No, that's the point," Shultz said dryly. "We never go to lesbian hangouts, and overt role-playing---being butch----is out. There's a fairly wide span of ages, a few are grandmothers, though very well-preserved grandmothers. These women are in income brackets that enable them to take care of themselves. And most of us are feminine." She permitted herself a wry smile. "Within our particular network, anyway, a woman who wants a woman wants a woman."
Shultz stopped and shrugged as if to suggest that it was just that simple.
"How large is this group?"
"I'm not sure, really. I guess I could name several dozen off the tip of my tongue, and I'm sure there are a number I don't know anything about."
"How does this network operate?"
Shultz nodded as if she knew that would be the next question, but her face was set.
"You don't understand, Detective," she said. "Some of these women are----prominent, or their husbands are prominent. And their husbands have no idea that something like this exists or that their wives have such needs." She moved a small, tapered middle finger over a dark arched eyebrow and looked away, thinking, chewing on the inside of her jaw. "This is volatile. I honestly don't know what to do."
"Mrs. Shultz, it sounds to me like someone's found out about this network of yours," Noah said. "And that someone clearly doesn't like what he's found. Maybe a husband or son or friend or lover of one of these women. It's the only logical answer. Someone's onto it."
Shultz straightened her back and brushed a little hand over her naked rib cage. She darted her eyes at Burr again. The girl had folded her arms and was biting a thumbnail, staring at Shultz as she smoked.
Noah looked at Burr. "Nolie, you told me that you'd met Geoffrey Stewart several times at Lauralee's. I know he'd had an affair with her that lasted almost one year. What did you think of him?"
"He was okay," she said. "A nice guy."
"How did he deal with learning that Lauralee was bisexual?"
"He kinda overreacted," she said. Noah imagined that was a considerable understatement.
"How so?"
"Well, I just know what Lauralee said, and she said he ran his hand through the wall in her bedroom, the sheetrock, you know. And he broke up some of her things."
"What things?"
"All her perfume and cosmetics. Just the stuff in her bedroom. I think they were in there when she told him."
"Was he easily angered?"
"I don't think so."
"Did Lauralee ever tell you about the time he knocked out Stanley Needham?"
Nolie nodded.
"What happened?"
"Oh, I think Stanley slapped Lauralee when Geoffrey was there, and Geoffrey jumped all over him."
"Hit him once and knocked him out?"
Nolie shrugged. "Well, that's not quite what Lauralee said. She said there was a real brawl, and she had to pull Geoffrey off Stanley, that Geoffrey almost ripped Stanley's ear off, and he had to have surgery on it. She said Geoffrey almost killed him."
"I was led to believe that Stewart was something of a gentleman," Noah said. "Is that how you viewed him?"
"Well, yes, he was, but he kind of had this other side of him, too. The guy scared me a little, but I don't really know why. It could've just been me."
Noah could believe that.
"What makes you think Lauralee and the other woman knew their killer?" Shultz asked, looking back at Noah. "Maybe they were random victims. You're not even sure the other woman's bisexual."
"You're right," Noah said. "We're not sure. But Vicki San Felipe willingly went to her hotel, checked in under a false name, and met someone she knew. There's every indication that Lauralee knew her killer, too. She willingly let him into the house. There was no illegal entry. There was no struggle, no sign of resistance."
"But you told me the last time we talked that she was strangled," Shultz said. "Surely there was some kind of struggle."
Noah shook his head. "Which brings us to the next thing we need to discuss. Both San Felipe and Lauralee were strangled----with a belt, probably the same belt. Their wrists and ankles had been tied, but apparently there was no struggle to either case. They had allowed themselves to be tied. Both were sexually mutilated in the same way. Sadomasochist paraphernalia was found hidden at both residences. Do many of the women in this group go in for that?"
Shultz shook her head firmly. "I suspect that what you found was used for autoerotic purposes."
Noah was prepared for that. He picked up the manila envelope again and took out the four-color photographs of Dowey tied to the bed, her leather-hooded tormentor aping for the camera. Noah spread the pictures out on the table and looked at the two women. Shultz was dumbfounded; Burr blanched, then dropped her eyes and quickly puffed on her cigarette.
"Nolie, I understand you know something about this," Noah said.
Shultz was quick to check her expression of shock at this second revelation, but her eyes betrayed a restrained disbelief as she casually turned around to Burr, who was keeping her head ducked as she shook it, denying the accusation. When Shultz saw the girl was hiding something----Burr was embarrassingly transparent---she moved quickly to shield her.
"Look," Shultz suddenly said to Noah. "What is it you want?"
"I want to know who the men were who were involved with Lauralee in this kind of rough sex." Noah addressed his remarks to Burr, ignoring Shultz's protective intervention. "I want to know who's wearing that leather hood."
"No!" Burr yelled, her childish face as flinty as she could make it. "No. Men? No!"
"I was told men were involved, Nolie," Noah raised his voice, stretching the truth, wanting to stretch it more, but checking herself before she overplayed.
Burr didn't start crying. The extra day had steadied her nerves, and perhaps her resolve. "I don't care what you were told," she raised her voice also. "It was just----the two of us----something----something she asked me to do. I went along."
"How did you 'go along'? By taking the pictures?"
"No, but I mean that kind of thing. Lauralee was into that."
"I can see that." Noah didn't bother to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "Now, who were the men?"
"There weren't any men, you idiot!"
"Then who the hell is this?" Noah stabbed a finger at the hooded figure.
"I do-not-know." Burr darted her eyes at the still off-balance Shultz.
Noah stared at Burr. Dammit, he believed her. The girl's confusion, her own exasperation, was translating to Noah as a feeling of futility in the face of impossible demands. Noah believed her, but something told her he was approaching quicksand. No one spoke, and Carolyn Shultz, stunned, curled up on her tapestry armchair and wrapped her sarong around both legs, sobered, with something to think about that she hadn't had to think about before. Reluctantly she took her eyes off Nolie Burr and turned to Noah.
"Look," she said. "This scares the hell out of me, but I can't bring myself to give you names. Let me talk to a few of these women----I'll be honest with you. I don't think any of them are going to talk, to risk it. But let me do what I can." She looked at the two photographs on the table. "Let me talk to her," indicating the unidentified woman posing with the mannequin.
"Take Vicki San Felipe's picture, too," Noah said. "We've got to know more about who she was seeing. You could be of great help to us."
There was another silence. After the scene they had just went through, Noah was dreading what he'd have to do next.
"There's one other thing," he said. "The crime lab has identified two other persons' hair in Lauralee's room and on her body." Both women frowned at him, incredulous. Burr suddenly looked as if she were going to cry. "Some of that hair may have come from the killer. There may be other hairs that turn up elsewhere in her bedroom as we continue to investigate," Noah said, not hitting directly on the mark of truth. He looked at Burr. "Since you were Lauralee's lover and had been in that room many times, we need to know which of those hairs might be yours. We need hair samples from you for comparison."
"Christ!" Shultz said. She seemed on the point of protesting, and Noah was afraid she was going to object on Burr's behalf when the girl spoke up.
"All right," she said. "What do I have to do?"
Shultz shook her head as if she couldn't believe Burr's idiocy.
"I have to have five head hairs from five different parts of your head," Noah said. "The front, the back, both sides, and the top. I have to have ten from the top area of your pubic hair, and ten from the hair around your vagina. The hair has to be plucked, not cut, and I have to witness that they came from you. I've got a package of small self-sealing package of small self-sealing plastic bags here, and I'll ID the source on each bag. We can go into the bathroom if you want."
"I don't care," Burr said. "We'll do it here."
While Shultz helped Burr, and Noah witnessed the process and marked and sealed the plastic bags, Burr proceeded to pluck a total of twenty-five long ginger hairs from the various locations on her head. That done, she stood, unbuttoned her shorts and stepped out of them, peeled off her pink panties, and sat back on the sofa. Bending her head she carefully plucked ten wiry hairs from high on her pubic bone, and then, more slowly, more carefully, she did the same from around her vagina. Noah held the small plastic bags for her as Burr dropped the hairs one by one, and then Noah sealed the bags and marked them.
While Burr dressed, Noah finished marking the bags, wrapped them in a bundle with a rubber band, and put them in his pocket. Then he picked up the photographs still lying on the gold tiles of the coffee table and returned them to the manila folder, leaving the picture of Vicki San Felipe. Picking up her purse and the envelope, she stood and looked at Burr, who was tucking her shirttail into her shorts.
"I appreciate your doing this," Noah said. "It'll help us a great deal."
"I didn't mind." Burr seemed no longer angry, but subdued. Noah wanted to say something else, but wasn't quite sure what. The girl was a bizarre mixture of innocence and deception that it was hard to know just how to handle her.505Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc9agVOWjQY
Noah turned to Shultz. "Do you still have my card and home phone number?" he asked.505Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1viZ1XwWjz
Shultz nodded, and Noah turned and started toward the entryway. Shultz followed him around the around the large potted ficus where the entryway stepped down to the front door. Opening the door himself, he stepped outside, not looking at Shultz. "Don't wait too long to use it," he said without looking back and walked out of the courtyard past the frondy sago palms and the bright blanks of snapdragons.505Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKZfAM4g2fw
