A Great Day for the Deadly(15)
“But I want to mention it at dinner tonight. I mean, for God’s sake, Miriam, I’ve got to have something to talk about. Those people look right through me.”
“Those people don’t know what to think about the fact that you married me,” Miriam said. “They’re very nice people, Josh, really. You can talk to them about religion, or art, or—”
“Why don’t I talk to them about sex, Miriam? At least that’s something I know something about.”
Miriam threw her eyebrow pencil down on the table and turned around in her seat. Looked at straightforwardly and more or less up close, Josh wasn’t really that perfect. It wouldn’t be too long before gravity began to tug at the corners of his eyes. Miriam Bailey didn’t care what anybody said. She didn’t find older men “distinguished,” merely older. She wanted no part of them. For the moment, however, Josh was young and necessary to her. She crossed her arms over the back of her chair, rested her chin on them and said, “Josh, try to make sense, please. You were with me when I listened to the news tonight. You must have heard what was said about the Cardinal sending that man Demarkian.”
“So what?”
“So he’s a famous expert on murder. He’s been called in to consult on cases all over the country. The Cardinal’s sending him here can only mean one thing.”
“What?” Josh asked suspiciously.
“That the Cardinal wants this thing settled his way,” Miriam said definitely. “Trust me, Josh. I’ve known the man for many years. I know what he’s like. The last thing O’Bannion wants is for someone who’s respected in one of his parishes, or some little old lady, or whatever, anyway, the last thing he wants is a solution that can tie the Church to this mess. Now here you are, saying you were walking on the levy at eleven o’clock on the morning of the flood—it must have been pouring rain by then, for goodness sake—and you saw Brigit Ann Reilly walking around with a box in her hand—”
“It wasn’t a box. It was a paper grocery bag.”
“Whatever it was. Add all that to the fact that I knew her—”
“You did?”
“Of course I did,” Miriam said, “she volunteered in the literacy program. I didn’t know her well, but I knew her to speak to. I know all the volunteers. They’ll say you knew her, too, you know, and you won’t be able to prove otherwise. You’re setting yourself up to be the perfect suspect. The Cardinal couldn’t have done better if he’d invented you himself.”
Josh raised his hands to his face and rubbed distractedly, a sure sign that he was thinking. Miriam didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one. Josh thinking was always a loose cannon. She turned back to the mirror and picked up her small bottle of what she thought of as “that white stuff you put on under your eyes and pretend it makes the wrinkles go away.” Behind her, Josh had risen out of his chair and begun to pace.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “I’ve got to be worried about this Demarkian man, not because I actually did anything, but because I’m a stranger in town, and also because I was taking a walk and also because—because what, Miriam? Why would I have wanted to kill some little nun?”
“Maybe you didn’t have a reason,” Miriam said. “That’s what Demarkian did, years ago, for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He tracked serial killers. You know the sort of person I mean.”
“Yes,” Josh said. “I know.”
“You’d be a perfect candidate for that, too,” Miriam said. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. You’d be very easy to pin something on. Especially once they found out—”
“Once they found out what?”
If makeup was supposed to do something for your face—instead of just sitting on it—then Miriam didn’t see any reason to go on putting more on hers. Nothing short of plastic surgery could do any more for her than had already been done. She wondered why she had never gone in for plastic surgery and then dismissed the idea. It wasn’t her kind of thing. Even knowing half the women who would be at dinner tonight had had a tuck here and a lift there didn’t matter. That conventional she just didn’t want to get. Maybe that was because, unlike most of the other women she knew, she had never relied on her “attractiveness” for much of anything.
She got up out of her chair and shook out her dress, watching its folds shimmer and shake in the mirror. Then she walked over to where Josh was standing and put her hand on his jacket. As soon as she touched him, he stiffened, in every place but the right one. She had her leg pressed against his groin, so she knew. It had been a long time since he’d been able to work up any enthusiasm for his side of this particular bargain. It had been a long time since she really cared. Maybe the nuns who had taught her in school had been right. Maybe there was something about sex no woman really wanted to know on the morning after.