Red Man Down(59)

‘What went wrong?’ Ollie asked her. ‘Was it Frank’s arrest?’

‘Yes. Ed felt so obligated to fix it. He kept saying, “He rescued me when I was little, now I gotta help him, I owe it.” He did what he could, hired an attorney, talked to everybody who would listen. But then Frank killed himself. He might as well have shot Ed first – it might have been better for everybody if he had. But no, he shot himself and left that stupid note.’

‘Ah, yes, the note,’ Sarah said. ‘Where is it, do you know?’

‘You mean you don’t have it?’

‘No, we can’t find it. Did Angela keep a stash of anything at the store? Or at your house?’

‘I live above the store. No, Angela never left anything with me. I think she had a trunk in storage somewhere.’

‘We have that, but there’s no note. No correspondence of any kind, by the way. Didn’t Angela have any family?’

‘Cousins back in Poland, but they don’t read or write English, and I think by now Angela probably had lost most of her Polish. I know I have. I think that was part of why she and Ed were so close – each of them was all the other had.’

‘Except Uncle Frank.’

‘Yes. But Frank was so … I don’t know … odd.’

‘In what way?’

Marjorie shrugged, turned her hands over in a helpless gesture and sighed. Finally she said, ‘I didn’t know him well, so maybe I missed something. But what I knew … He was shy, I guess. Almost … furtive. Like a little scared rabbit. Angela said she believed Frank, after his wife and baby died, felt too guilty to have anything in his life but work until he adopted Ed. In a sense, she said, they saved each other.’

‘But you know,’ Ollie said, ‘Ed Lacey was a successful police officer for many years. And not to boast or anything, but you don’t keep a job in law enforcement by being a wuss.’

‘I know. Angela knew it too, and she was so proud to be married to a man who could be as gentle as Ed was at the food bank, and yet be tough enough to be a patrolman in Tucson. She said he was living proof that if you were willing to work hard enough you could make yourself into the person you wanted to be.’

‘Wow,’ Ollie said. ‘Wouldn’t I like to get praise like that from my wife.’

‘Maybe you do and you just don’t listen,’ Marjorie said, and got one of Ollie’s trademark ironic smiles in reply. ‘When Ed passed all his tests to teach at the academy, she was so happy for him. They both saw it as the validation of what he had achieved.’

‘I guess I didn’t see any of that when we talked,’ Sarah said. ‘She seemed kind of … detached and cold.’

‘She was walking wounded when you saw her. She had really been sure that this time she had something so solid nothing could wreck it. And then something did.’

‘She must have been very angry.’

‘She was furious at the credit union  , yes. Not at Ed. She said what happened to him with the alcohol and drugs was mostly owing to his extreme naiveté. He’d never tried drugs or drinking or gone around with the boys who did. And being a policeman, he thought he was pretty sophisticated. Well, he was – about other people’s faults. But he didn’t realize how vulnerable he was. By the time he knew, he was hooked.’

‘So in substance,’ Sarah said, ‘you still don’t think she killed herself.’

‘I feel very certain she didn’t. She was grieving for Ed, of course. But defending him the way she had earlier had given her a new sense of what she could become. As soon as she healed up a little and figured out her next moves, I was looking for her to get a better job and build her life back, stronger than ever.’

‘Was her new haircut a first step, do you think?’

‘Maybe. She really surprised me – just showed up one day with a fresh do and when I told her it looked great she said it was all part of the plan.’ Marjorie put her two hands together in a supplication pose. ‘It’s a rotten shame that someone robbed her of the rest of that plan. Please tell me you’ll find the terrible person who did it.’

‘We intend to try very hard,’ Sarah said.

‘It’s what we do,’ Ollie said.

‘Then blessings on you,’ Marjorie said, and Ollie gave her his best Alfred E. Neuman gap-toothed smile. The two of them traded cards and she got up, getting ready to leave. Sarah, watching them smile and shake hands, reflected gloomily that interesting conversation and new friendships were all very well, but this one hadn’t moved them much closer to the answers she was after. But as Marjorie turned to say goodbye she remembered the question she’d written crosswise on the side of her list, and said, ‘One more thing.’