“Yes ma’am.”
“My, my. Eric Wilson. Look at you, a police officer now. I had no idea.” She gave Shannon a quick glance. “Eric, is there any trouble here?”
“No ma’am. This man is a private investigator from Colorado. He’s looking into Linda’s murder.”
“Is that so?” She looked back at Shannon and gave him a halfhearted smile. The way the sunlight hit her, Shannon felt almost as if he was wearing x-ray glasses and could see the skull beneath her flesh. As it was, he had no trouble making out the patchwork of thin blue veins which crisscrossed her temples. He nodded to her. “I’ve been hired to find the persons responsible for your daughter’s death. I’m hoping you can give me ten minutes of your time. If you’d feel more comfortable, I’m sure Officer Wilson would be willing to sit in with us.”
Wilson seemed surprised at being included, but said that would be fine with him.
Mrs. Gibson gave Wilson a patronizing smile and told him that wouldn’t be necessary. Turning back to Shannon, she agreed to give him ten minutes. “Although I’m not sure what good it would do,” she said. “I don’t know what I could possibly tell you that I didn’t already tell the Boulder police. But if you require ten minutes from me, fine. Meet me at the front door.”
Before pulling away, she smiled at Eric and told him to stop over at the house some afternoon, that she’d like to catch up with him. “I’m surprised you didn’t come to the funeral,” she said, her smile cracking a bit. Wilson mumbled an apology about that, saying he had to work that day. “That’s okay, dear,” Mrs. Gibson said. “I do remember receiving your flowers and note. They were very sweet. Please do stop by sometime.”
Wilson nodded. He watched stone-faced as Mrs. Gibson drove into her driveway and parked in the rightmost garage space. After the garage door closed behind her, Wilson extended his hand to Shannon.
“I need to thank you for what you did to both of those Winters cousins,” he said. “I can only hope they’re rotting in hell.”
Shannon nodded, taking his hand.
Wilson looked down at the ground a bit sheepishly, added, “Before you leave Wichita, could I maybe buy you a cup of coffee and pie somewhere? I’d like to ask you a few questions about them.”
“I’ll answer any questions I can, but I’d rather give you my cell phone number and have you think about it for a few days.” Shannon sighed, started to rub the joints around his missing fingers, caught himself and stuck his hands in his pockets. “There’re things about them you’re probably better off not knowing. My advice, try to remember that your aunt’s in peace now and there’s nothing Charlie or Herbert Winters can do anymore to change that.”
He ripped a sheet from his notepad, scribbled his cell phone number on it and handed it to Wilson, who took the paper and put a finger to his eye as if he were rubbing dirt from it.
“What time’s your flight back to Colorado?” Wilson asked.
“Five-o-eight.”
“I’ll think about what you said.” He turned his gaze away from Shannon. “I still might call you this afternoon.”
Wilson rubbed the back of his hands across his eyes, nodded in Shannon’s direction and slowly walked back to his cruiser. He honked twice at Shannon as he drove off.
Mrs. Gibson was waiting for Shannon at the front door. He had to squint hard to see a trace of her daughter in her. She was probably the same height and weight as Linda had been, but she was more bony than thin. She had on low-rise designer jeans and a tight blouse exposing her belly button. From a distance, she might’ve been able to pass for her twenties but up close she looked every bit her age. With all her facelifts, Botox and collagen injections, she hadn’t succeeded in shaving much, if anything, from her age.
“Who hired you to do this?” she demanded.
“Taylor Carver’s mother-”
“I don’t believe that woman would spend a dime hiring you!”
“I don’t believe so either. But she’s suing the owner of the condo that your daughter and Carver rented.” Shannon explained the whole story to her.
“Simply unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head. “I swear that woman must be pure white trash. And that’s the family Linda had to get involved with. Par for the course with her.” She stepped aside, letting Shannon enter past her. “I promised you ten minutes and I’ll give you exactly that.”
She led Shannon from a marble foyer into a room that could’ve been a small modern art museum. The room was large and the ceiling high enough to hold a basketball court. The walls were covered with modern abstract paintings. Shannon spotted Picasso’s signature on a watercolor of naked women done in blue and orange, but the painting that stopped him was one of a temple resting on a foundation of prayer books and pages that had been torn from them.
“My husband collects those,” Mrs. Gibson said to Shannon as she sidled up next to him. “I couldn’t tell you a thing about any of them. Follow me and we’ll talk in the kitchen. You have eight and a half minutes left of the ten I promised you.”
She led him through a living room, then into a kitchen larger than Shannon’s apartment back in Boulder. The living room walls displayed more artwork and family photographs were scattered about on tables and built-in shelves. Most of the photos were either of Mrs. Gibson alone or with her husband. A few had a teenage girl that he didn’t recognize. She was blond like Linda, but had a squarer face that was shaped more like her mother’s.
The kitchen he’d been taken to was all glass and stainless steel. Mrs. Gibson directed Shannon to sit at an oval-shaped glass table and asked if he’d like anything to drink. He told her water would be fine.
“Mineral or flat?” she asked.
“Whatever comes out of the tap.”
She smiled at that, took a bottle of San Pellegrino water from the refrigerator and handed it to Shannon. “I think you’ll enjoy this a tad more,” she said as she took a chair diagonally across from his.
Shannon took out his miniature tape recorder and asked whether she’d mind if he recorded their conversation. She told him she’d prefer he didn’t. He hesitated, but turned the recorder off and put it away.
“Those ten minutes were asked for figuratively,” Shannon said. He tried smiling at her but a dull ache from his jaw ruined it. “I’d hope you’d be willing to spend more time if it meant finding the persons responsible for your daughter’s death.”
“You hoped wrong, Mr. Shannon. As far as I’m concerned, Linda’s responsible for the choices she made and any consequences that followed. I’m through beating myself up over them.” She gave Shannon a thin, condescending smile. “Oh, I can see from your expression that you’re judging me as an awful mother. That’s your choice, but I’d suggest you have a daughter like Linda and then judge me. Besides, how do I know you’re any good as a detective and that my talking to you isn’t a complete waste of my time?”
“You don’t. I can tell you I solved a fair amount of cases when I was a police detective for six years. And unfortunately, more than my share of murders.”
“You were a police officer for six years?”
“Ten. Six as detective.”
“Where was this?”
“Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
That seemed to catch her attention. “I take it then you’re a better detective than you are a fighter,” she said half under her breath.
“You should see what the other two guys look like,” Shannon said, this time keeping his smile intact. “Could you tell me about your daughter?”
“Tell you about Linda?” She gave Shannon a sad, thoughtful smile. “Where to begin. When she was young she was a sweet girl, always trying so hard to please.” Her mouth began to crumble but she caught it. After the moment passed, she added, “Things changed around puberty. The last ten years it’s been nothing but a battle with her.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Everything was my fault.” She sniffed a couple of times but her eyes remained clear. “All her mistakes, all her bad judgment, all her problems were my fault. According to her I was responsible for everything that went wrong in her life.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Thanksgiving. She brought her boyfriend with her.”
“Taylor Carver?”
