“A complete one-eighty. Go figure.”
“Were Mary Lou and Laura there?”
He scrunched his eyes shut as if trying to picture them in the scene. “I can’t visualize them, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.” He hesitated. “Well, Mary Lou might have shown up, but not Laura. The popular kids were always merciless with poor Laura. I’m surprised she hasn’t suffered permanent emotional damage.”
“She apparently rose above it.”
Chip pondered this as he massaged the bristly white hairs of his mustache. “Either that, or she’s spent a fortune on therapy.”
“Whatever the explanation, she’s certainly come out the winner. So,” I eyed him intently, “at what point did Bobby disappear?”
“Okay, I’m getting to that. We spent the day horsing around—eating junk food, sneaking into the woods to drink the beer we’d smuggled out of our houses, hanging out, making out, getting a buzz on—all the stuff that seems so cool when you’re a teenager. When it got later, Bobby said he had to get home before he got locked out, so he decided to hitchhike, and … that’s the last time we ever saw him.”
I stared at him, slightly jarred. “That’s it?”
“Pretty much.”
“He had the kind of parents who would actually lock him out?”
“He didn’t have parents. He lived at the orphanage on the other side of the city. St. Michael’s Home. The nuns locked the door at nine o’clock, so if you showed up at 9:01, you were on your own. I guess Bobby had missed curfew a couple of times growing up, and he didn’t want to do it again. He wasn’t fond of sleeping on the ground.”
Bobby Guerrette was an orphan? Huh. Someone had made a reference to an orphan, a misfit, and a girl who was afraid of her own shadow on the dinner cruise last night, but I’d obviously been too distracted by rising tempers to make the connection.
“None of us knew he didn’t make it back to the orphanage until he didn’t show up for class the next day. What a commotion. The principal called the police. We all got questioned. But hell, we didn’t know squat.”
“Did anyone see Bobby actually get into a car?”
His eyes flickered with sudden anxiety, as if he were struggling to recall the details. “I didn’t see anything, mostly because I was three sheets to the wind, but Hennessy saw a car stop to pick him up. Make and model unknown because it was too dark to tell, but he was reasonably sure it wasn’t white, and he didn’t think it was a station wagon. Peewee and Mike backed him up, but let’s face it, it wasn’t much to go on. Little wonder the police never found him.”
“That’s so sad.” I felt an emotional tug, not only for Bobby Guerrette, who never seemed to have gotten a break, but for the bullied kids, like Laura LaPierre, and the square pegs, like Pete Finnegan, who’d never experienced the thrill of having a buddy punch him in the arm in congratulations.
I suffered a twinge of guilt that I might have misjudged Pete. If I’d been a flaming introvert who’d been shunned in high school, I might have become a grouch, too. So maybe he wasn’t a villain. Maybe he was just a socially inept guy who was in desperate need of a friend.
“Changing the topic just slightly,” I ventured, “were you present for the big blowup last night?”
“In the Red Light District? Sure was. It was the classic battle between good and evil. Paula Peavey versus everyone else.”
“Did Pete threaten her?”
“Sure did. Said he’d been wanting to take her out for fifty years, though his choice of words was a bit more, how shall I say, colorful.”
“Did you know Paula never made it back to the hotel last night?”
“No kidding? I’d noticed the lack of tension on the bus this morning. Maybe she’s hanging out with your two guys. Or better yet, maybe she decided to go home. She got a pretty brutal taste of her own medicine last night. She might be feeling a little chicken-livered about facing her detractors after that. Paula loved to dish it out, but she could never take it.”
“You didn’t happen to see her after the blowup last night, did you?”
“Who, me?” He leaned back on his heels, as if trying to back away from the question. “Nope. Didn’t see her. Uh” —he checked the time— “would you excuse me? I need to make a quick pit stop before we meet up with our art expert.”
As a practical matter, it seemed someone should advise Wally of the possibility that Paula could have been too humiliated to continue the tour and might have caught a flight home, and I supposed that person would be me, but I didn’t relish the thought of freaking him out any more than I already had.
I cast an uneasy glance around the exhibit room, relieved when I didn’t see him.
Okay, at the very least, I felt duty-bound to go through the motions, but if luck was with me, maybe I wouldn’t run into him.
Happily, I ran into Mary Lou and Laura instead.
“Am I ever glad to see the two of you,” I said in greeting. “Mike was so concerned about you last night. He said one minute you were there, and the next, you were gone. What happened to you?”
Mary Lou offered a hesitant smile. “We got separated in the crowd. It was no big deal. I don’t know why Mike made such a fuss.”
I laughed. “Duh? He was afraid something might happen to you.”
“We’re big girls.” She linked arms with Laura. “We can take care of ourselves.”
Was it just me, or was Mary Lou acting a little testy? “So did you hook up with Mike on the bridge, or did you end up finding your way back to the hotel on your own?”
“We—” It was the only word she got out before freezing up like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
Laura tapped her watch to indicate the hour. “Sorry, Emily, but would you mind if we finished this conversation another time? Mary Lou and I have to powder our noses before the tour begins. See you up there. Okay?”
“Sure,” I said, as the two of them headed off in another direction.
Hmm. I seemed to be throwing everyone into a tailspin. They couldn’t get away from me fast enough. Maybe I should stop asking people about last night. And yet, if my innocent questions could spark such instantaneous urges to hit the restroom, what did that indicate? Bladder control problems, or something much darker?
A shiver rattled my spine as I searched out the staircase to the first floor.
I was getting a very bad feeling about this.
Ten
“It’s called
His name was Harold, and he had the clear, well-modulated voice of a natural-born auctioneer. I could imagine him requesting opening bids for diamonds at Sothebys, pearls at Christie’s, or hogs at Arnie’s Auction Barn.
“According to the Bible story, St. Anna worshiped God day and night in the temple and therefore witnessed the young Jesus when he questioned the holy men about their teachings.”
I stood on tiptoe at the back of the group, thinking I’d have to wait until they moved on to the next painting before I could get a good look at this one. It also didn’t help that Peewee was hogging the front.
“Please note Rembrandt’s use of light and shadow in the portrait. He wants you to focus on both the woman’s hand and the Bible page, so he illuminates these details in such a way as to make them appear to be lit by a spotlight. The woman’s face, which is oftentimes the most important aspect of a portrait, is entirely in shadow.”
