The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(67)
The two-story brick house was pretty and stood a little way off the road in a residential street. Madison was walking up the short driveway when Paula Wilson—her married name was Kruger—opened her front door and gazed past her, as if something unwelcome was trailing behind the detective.
“I think I might have given you the wrong impression,” the woman said as Madison took a sip of coffee from a hand-painted ceramic mug. “My husband knows all about Warren. It’s just that it was a difficult period in our lives, and he would be upset for me . . .”
Paula Wilson Kruger was a handsome brunette who looked her age and took care of herself. Madison knew that she was forty-seven years old, two years younger than Warren Lee. The home and everything in it told her about a stable family life in a quiet neighborhood. They sat in the living room—a patterned, three-seat sofa and matching chairs—and Madison could smell the pot roast in the oven.
“What can you tell me about Warren Lee?” she asked, treading carefully and not knowing where this might lead.
The woman smiled briefly, and then the fond look went away. “He was cute when I knew him. He was cute but mean as a snake.”
Madison had the good sense not to interrupt.
“I was twenty years old—that’s all I can say in my defense. I met Warren in a mall, he chatted me up, we started dating, and we moved in together after a few weeks. My parents were unhappy about it, but I thought I knew everything.”
The woman sipped her coffee. “It was the worst two years of my life,” she said finally. “I’m a nurse—have been for a while. Did you know that?”
Madison nodded.
“I can always spot the girls who are in trouble, the women. It’s not about age, really. Sometimes they let me help them; sometimes they don’t. But I can always see it—the ones who are afraid, ashamed, so deep inside the hole, they cannot see out. That was me with Warren. We had two perfect months, and then things changed. He was wonderful one day and angry the next. After a while, he didn’t bother with wonderful anymore. There was occasional violence, but mostly it was fear, constant fear.”
“Did you work? Did he?”
Madison already knew the answers but wanted to hear her side of things.
“I dropped out of community college, and I was waitressing in a restaurant over in Kirkland. Warren worked part-time in a club, but he always had more money than he should have had. I didn’t ask him where it came from, and he didn’t tell me.”
The woman hesitated. “I haven’t seen Warren in over twenty years. Why would you be interested in something that happened such a long time ago?”
Madison turned the words around in her mind before speaking. “We are trying to understand the kind of person he was, to understand what happened to him and why. Did you meet any of the people he worked with?”
“Some. People from the club mostly.”
“Do you remember any names? People he knew or saw regularly, even people he just talked about from time to time?”
The woman sighed.
“There was Henry Dee and his girlfriend, Lisa—they were nice to me,” she said. “Bill Morris, the other bartender.”
Madison wrote down the names.
“Richard Lucas and his brother, Paul.” She hesitated. The memories were gradually coming to the light like stowaways.
“Does the name Ronald Gray mean anything to you? Or Vincent Foley?”
“No.”
“Did Warren ever mention a man named Gilman? Timothy Gilman?”
The woman ran the palm of her hand over a pillow on the sofa—a soft, quilted square had been embroidered on the top: robins over cherry blossoms. “Lisa was a sweet girl; she was a lap dancer at the club. I have no idea what happened to her,” she said, and she stood up. “I need to check on the roast.”
Madison waited as Paula Wilson Kruger busied herself in the kitchen for a few minutes. She knew that an answer would come, and if the woman needed time to get herself together and feel the comfort of the life she had built, Madison would let her have it.
“Is he dead?” the woman asked her from the kitchen door. “Gilman—is he dead?”
“You knew him?”
“I met him. Once. Is he dead?”
“Yes. Twenty years ago.”
“Good. That’s good,” the woman said.
There it was: Quinn had been right. They knew each other.
“Please tell me about him.”
“He came to our house. He had found the job at the club for Warren, and Warren talked about him all the time. The things he’d done. He was like a puppy around him.”
“And you met him?”
“Once was enough. He came to pick up Warren one afternoon, June or July that last summer, and I had heard so much about him already, but he didn’t come inside; he just stood by his car.”