Remember Me, Irene

others.

Roberta looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get going. Good-bye, everybody! It was good to see you!”

“Wait,” Lisa called as Roberta reached the doors. “Will we see each other before I go back to San Diego?”

“Sure, if you can meet me for lunch tomorrow,” she said. “I’m traveling to a meeting in Sacramento tomorrow night.” Lisa nodded in agreement, and Roberta left. Lisa extracted similar promises from several of the others as we walked out of the hotel.

As its name suggests, the Cliffside is built above the ocean, and outside, the salt air was damp and cold. The others hastened their movements. I needed the coldness, the briny smell, and found myself walking more slowly than the others. Their voices eddied around me, surging bits and pieces of conversations passing me as the women moved on to their cars, leaving me standing on the steps of the Cliffside, until the only remaining sound was the whispering of the sea below the cliffs.

I heard it beneath a chorus of relentless self-accusation.

“IRENE?”

I turned to see a tall blonde standing behind me. “Oh-hi, Claire. I thought everyone else had left.”

“They have. I was going to call a cab, then I saw you standing out here alone. Are you all right?” she asked.

I nodded. “How about you?”

“I-I need a favor, actually. I wonder if I could get a ride. My car is in the shop, so Ben was going to pick me up this evening, but I guess he’s fallen asleep. I’ve called, but I just keep getting the answering machine.”

“Maybe he’s on his way over here. I’ll wait with you, if you’d like.”

She shook her head. “At first I thought he might be on his way, but it’s been too long. And he doesn’t answer the car phone in his Jag.”

She literally meant “his Jag,” as in “his and hers.” Ben and Claire Watterson had matching Jaguars. This proved they were frugal-they could have afforded a chauffeur-driven limo. And she wanted a ride in my drafty old heap? Right. Cab fare, even all the way across town to their mansion, could have been paid for with about two minutes’ worth of the interest on Claire’s pin-money account. So I figured that Claire needed a favor, but it wasn’t a ride.

“Sure, I’d be happy to give you a lift,” I said. “Just let me go back into the hotel and call Frank. He’s turned into a real worrywart.”

“Please, use mine,” she said, reaching into her handbag and pulling out a cellular phone.

I started to say “A pay phone would be cheaper,” but realized what a ludicrous remark that would seem to Claire. I called home. I also got an answering machine, and left a brief message saying I’d be later than expected.

“Frank must have been called out,” I said, handing the phone back to her. “Come on. I’m parked in the self- parking lot-I’m too cheap for valet.” I paused, wondering again why she would want to ride with me. Even though Claire was one of the women who had survived Andre Selman, I usually only saw her at the annual dinner. But in the next moment, I thought of the last time I had turned my back on someone. “I’ve only been to your house for a couple of fund-raisers,” I said. “Seaside Estates, right?’

“Yes. I hope it’s not too far?”

“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t get to talk to you much tonight. This will be our chance to catch up.”

“Yes,” she said, but didn’t say more as we walked to the car.

As I started the Karmann Ghia, she asked, “What did you mean, ‘called out’?”

“Pardon?”

“About your husband. You said he must have been called out.”

“These are his prime business hours. He’s on call tonight.”

“On call? Is he a doctor?”

“He’s a homicide detective.”

She made a face. After a moment she said, “Doesn’t it bother you that he spends his time around dead bodies?”

“Cuts down on the office sex.”

“Irene!”

“Sorry. No, the dead ones don’t bother me. In general, bodies don’t tend to be dangerous. It’s the folks who left them that way that worry me.”

Her perfect brows drew together. “Yes, I suppose the fact that he’s out looking for killers is more frightening.”

“Right. I begin to feel relieved if it’s a suicide case.”

She was silent for a time, then suddenly asked, “Who’s Lucas Monroe?”

Good question, I thought. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that Lucas Monroe was a drunk on a bus bench, partly because I couldn’t understand how it could be that Lucas was that man. “I’m not who I used to be,” he had told me. No kidding.

“An old friend,” I said. “I haven’t seen him in years. I met him in college.” When he was strong, good-looking, and dressed more neatly than about 98 percent of the student body. So clean-cut, he wore a suit and tie every day. “He was a graduate student, a teaching assistant in sociology. I took a statistics class from him.”

“Statistics?” She was openly puzzled. “I thought you majored in journalism.”

“I did. And Introduction to Statistics wasn’t required for my degree. I took the class at my father’s urging.”

“Your father must have been a cruel man.”

I laughed. “I fought the suggestion. But my father argued that government decisions were constantly being made on the basis of statistical studies, and that I would be a better reporter if I could analyze those studies on my own.”

“Statistics was the most boring class I ever took,” she said.

“I told my dad that I had heard that complaint from lots of stat students. He pooh-poohed that, told me to ask around the various departments until I found someone who had a reputation for teaching the subject well. Lucas Monroe had that reputation.”

“You must have really loved your father to take that class.”

“My father and I were close, but we weren’t getting along very well at that time. Growth pains, I suppose.”

“But you took the statistics class anyway.”

“To prove him wrong. When I later reported that Lucas Monroe made a convert out of me, my father was pleased. When I graduated, Dad ignored my journalism professors and sought out Lucas.” I shook my head, remembering. “He made his way through the commencement crowd to shake Lucas’s hand. They talked for a while, and later my father said, ‘That young man is destined for great things.’”

“Was he right?”

I swallowed hard, pretended fascination with the road for a moment. “My father’s prediction wasn’t remarkable. Just about everyone who knew Lucas saw the same bright future. Lucas had won scholarships and awards, and he had obtained his bachelor’s summa cum laude. He was doing well in his graduate studies-had a gift for both teaching and research.”

“What does he do for a living? Is he a professor at Las Piernas?”

“I don’t know what he’s doing now,” I said, thinking that was at least partly true. “Like I said, I lost track of him. Lucas was gone from the college by the time I returned to Las Piernas. Later, when I was working at theExpress, I ran into some complex studies that were far beyond my abilities. I called and asked for him, and was told that he was no longer with the department of sociology. I wasn’t surprised, really, because he had talked of going on for a doctorate at one of the big universities. He told me he wanted to try to get on the faculty at Las Piernas, but I just figured he found something elsewhere.”

“You said he was a graduate assistant in sociology? Andre Selman’s department?”

“Yes. Lucas was one of the researchers on one of Andre’s first well-known studies. In fact, I met Andre while sitting in Lucas’s office.”