Ashes to Ashes

The pain of Emily's death had nearly crushed her. No-nonsense, unflappable Kate Conlan. Grief and guilt had struck her with the force of a Mack truck, shattering her, stunning her. She'd had no idea how to cope. Turning to her husband hadn't been an option because Steven Waterston had readily shoveled his own sense of guilt and blame onto Kate. And so she had turned to a friend. . . .

“And if you tell Sabin it might have worked,” she continued, “the dead body in question will be yours. I told him you'd back me up on this, John, and you'd damn well better. You owe me one.”

“Yeah,” he said softly, the old memories still too close to the surface. “At least.”

14

CHAPTER

LOCATED IN THE Lowry Hill area, just south of the tangle of interstate highways that corralled downtown Minneapolis, D'Cup was the kind of coffeehouse funky enough for the artsy crowd and just clean enough for the patrons of the nearby Guthrie Theater and Walker Art Center. Liska walked in and breathed deep the rich aroma of exotic imported beans.

She and Moss had split the duties for the day, needing to cover as much ground as they could. Mother Mary, with her twenty-some years of maternal experience, had taken the unenviable task of talking with the families of the first two victims. She would open the old wounds as gently as possible. Liska had gladly taken the job of meeting with one of Jillian Bondurant's only known friends: Michele Fine.

Fine worked at D'Cup as a waitress and sometimes sang and played guitar on the small stage wedged into a corner near the front window. The three customers in the place sat at small tables near the window, absorbing the weak sunlight filtering in after three days of November gloom. Two older men—one tall and slender with a silver goatee, one shorter and wider with a black beret—sipped their espressos and argued the merits of the National Endowment for the Arts. A younger blond man with bug-eye gargoyle sunglasses and a black turtleneck nursed a grande something-or-other and worked a newspaper crossword puzzle. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray beside his drink. He had the thin, vaguely seedy look of a struggling actor.

Liska went to the counter, where a hunky Italian-looking guy with a wavy black ponytail was pressing grounds into the fine cone-shaped basket of an espresso machine. He glanced up at her with eyes the color of dark Godiva chocolate. She resisted the urge to swoon. Barely. She wasn't as successful in resisting the automatic counting of the weeks since she'd had sex. Moss would have told her mothers of nine- and eleven-year-old boys weren't supposed to have sex.

“I'm looking for Michele.”

He nodded, shoved the basket into place on the machine, and cranked the handle around. “Chell!”

Fine came through the archway that led into a back room carrying a tray of clean Fiestaware coffee cups the size of soup bowls. She was tall and thin with a narrow, bony face bearing several old scars that made Liska think she must have been in a car accident a long time ago. One curled down at one corner of her wide mouth. Another rode the crest of a high cheekbone like a short, flat worm. Her dark hair had an unnatural maroon sheen, and she had slicked it back against her head and bound it at the nape of her neck. The length of it bushed out in a kinky mass fatter than a fox tail.

Liska flashed her ID discreetly. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me, Michele. Can we sit down?”

Fine set the tray aside and pulled her purse out from under the counter. “You mind if I smoke?”

“No.”

“I can't seem to stop,” she said, her voice as rusty as an old gate hinge. She led the way to a table in the smoking section, as far away from the blond man as possible. “This whole business with Jillie . . . my nerves are raw.”

Her hand was trembling slightly as she extracted a long, thin cigarette from a cheap green vinyl case. Puckered, discolored flesh warped the back of her right hand. Tattooed around the scar, an elegant, intricately drawn snake coiled around Fine's wrist, its head resting on the back of her hand, a small red apple in its mouth.

“Looks like that was a nasty burn,” Liska said, pointing to the scar with her pen as she flipped open her pocket notebook.

Fine held her hand out, as if to admire it. “Grease fire,” she said dispassionately. “When I was a kid.”

She flicked her lighter and stared at the flame, frowning for a second. “It hurt like hell.”

“I'll bet.”

“So,” she said, snapping out of the old memories. “What's the deal? No one will say for sure that Jillie's dead, but she is, isn't she? All the news reports talk about ‘speculation' and ‘likelihood,' but Peter Bondurant is involved and giving a reward. Why would he do that if it wasn't Jillie? Why won't anyone just say it's her?”

“I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to comment. How long have you known Jillian?”

“About a year. She comes in here every Friday, either before or after her session with her shrink. We got to know each other.”

She took a deep pull on her cigarette and exhaled through teeth set wide apart. Her eyes were hazel, too narrow and too heavily lined with black, the lashes stubby and crusty with mascara. A mean look, Vanlees had called it. Nikki thought tough was a better word.

“And when was the last time you saw Jillian?”

“Friday. She stopped in on her way to see the psychic vampire.”

“You don't approve of Dr. Brandt? Do you know him?”

She squinted through the haze of smoke. “I know he's a money-sucking leech who doesn't give a damn about helping anyone but himself. I kept telling her to dump him and get a woman therapist. He was the last thing she needed. All he was interested in was keeping his hand in Daddy's pocket.”

“Do you know why she was seeing him?”

She looked just over Liska's shoulder and out the window. “Depression. Unresolved stuff with her parents' divorce and her mom and her stepfather. The usual family shit, right?”

“Glad to say I wouldn't know. Did she tell you specifics?”

“No.”

Lie, Nikki thought. “Did she ever do drugs that you know of?”

“Nothing serious.”

“What's that mean?”

“A little weed once in a while when she was wired.”

“Who'd she buy it from?”

Fine's expression tightened, the scars on her face seeming darker and shinier. “A friend.”

Meaning herself, Liska figured. She spread her hands. “Hey, I'm not interested in busting anybody's ass over a little weed. I just want to know if Jillian could have had an enemy in that line.”

“No. She hardly ever did it anyway. Not like when she lived in Europe. She was into everything there—sex, drugs, booze. But she kicked all that when she came here.”

“Just like that? She comes over here and lives like a nun?”

Fine shrugged, tapping off her cigarette. “She tried to kill herself. I guess that changes a person.”

“In France? She tried to kill herself?”

“That's what she told me. Her stepfather locked her up in a mental hospital for a while. Ironic, seeing as how she was going crazy because of him.”

“How's that?”

“He was fucking her. She actually believed he was in love with her for a while. She wanted him to divorce her mother and marry her.” She related the information in an almost offhand manner, as if that kind of behavior were the norm in her world. “She ended up taking a bunch of pills. Stepdaddy had her put away. When she got out, she came back here.”

Liska scribbled the news in a personal shorthand no one but she could read, excitement making it all the more illegible. She'd hit the mother lode of dirt here. Kovac would love it. “Did her stepfather ever come here to see her?”