Already Dead

– I'll get it.

She waves me down and walks to the sink.

– My drunken seduction scene and its fallout are over, Joseph. I'm quite capable of filling a glass.

She fills the glass, shows it to me as proof. Then she sits back on the couch and opens her handbag. I watch as she takes out her compact and looks at herself in the mirror.

– Horrors.

She begins reapplying her makeup. I look at my watch, it's after two and I still have things I need to take care of.

– What about Whitney Vale?

Her eyes flick from the mirror to me and back.

– She's one of the kids Amanda had been living with in that school last summer. One of the, squatters, is it? Amanda was attached to her, wanted her to come stay with us. Well, that was out of the question. We told her she wasn't even to see any of those people. Naturally she did what any teenager would do and threatened to run away again if she couldn't see Whitney.

She throws up her free hand in surrender.

– Needless to say, I know where that kind of rebellion ends. It ends giving blow jobs to older men in nightclub bathrooms. I told her that Whitney could visit, but that she was not to spend time with her outside of the town house. I knew she would, but I hoped to keep a pretence of parental supervision. Doubly so when I met Ms. Vale.

– Why?

She traces a perfect line of scarlet around the edges of her lips.

– She's a tramp, Joseph, a tramp and a thief who was using my daughter's friendship to get money and anything else she could snatch on her visits to our home. I recognized her type the first time she came through the door. It was, after all, like looking into a mirror.

Her hand freezes and she stares into her compact.

– A seventeen-year-old mirror, but a mirror nonetheless.

– Your husband?

She pats powder onto her still flushed cheeks.

– Oh, yes, he saw that quality in her as well. And believe me, she made certain that he knew she was of legal age, despite her appearance very much to the contrary.

– She came on to him?

– Mmm. Came on to him. No, it was more that she performed for him. Flounced, let her skirt fly up a little too high, touched him a bit too intimately. Acted, in general, as though she were the fifteen- year-old that she appeared to be.

– How did he handle it?

She takes a last look in the mirror, flicks a strand of hair from her forehead, and snaps the compact shut.

– My husband is not a figurehead, Joseph. He is a gifted executive and businessman. He is also a medical doctor and epidemiologist. He did not simply found Horde Bio Tech, he is its chief researcher. He is devoted to his work and rarely at home. Then Whitney started paying us visits. For the last year it has become more and more common for him to work at home or to stop in for an unexpected lunch. I was not shocked by his interest in her, only that he allowed it to be seen by others. Then again, it really isn't all that surprising.

– Why?

– Surely you noticed.

– What?

– The resemblance? To my daughter. I think they even made a game of it when they met strangers, saying they were related.

I remember Missy telling me she thought the Vale and Horde girls were sisters.

– What did your daughter think about Whitney's little act with your husband?

She takes her cell phone from her bag.

– Amanda is a very sophisticated fourteen-year-old, but she is a fourteen-year-old. I'm not certain the threat of Dale's advances is entirely real to her. Or undesired, for that matter. It would not be unusual for her to be sexually curious about her father. In the abstract.

She opens her phone and starts to dial.

– I'm going to call my car.

She makes the call and tells her driver she's ready to be picked up.

– Amanda loved Whitney. I think she thought Whitney's flirting was a joke, a way of making fun of her father, which pleased Amanda no end. Whitney never behaved like that around anyone else. That was the inspiration for Amanda's schoolgirl crush, Whitney was so mature and street-smart. She thought Whitney was having a laugh at Dale's expense, and I suppose she was, but she was also hoping it might pay off.

– Did it?

She gets up and begins straightening her clothes, brushing away lint from my couch, smoothing wrinkles.

– -I don't know for certain. But something happened.

– What?

– Perhaps two weeks ago Whitney stopped coming over, and Dale stopped spending so much time at home. And things were somewhat normal.

I don't bother asking if she thinks her husband had anything to do with Vale's death. I don't have to. After all, the killer's hand is holding the cigarette I'm smoking.

Her cell rings once.

– That's my car, Joseph.

I get up.

– Whitney stopped coming over around two weeks ago. So what happened between then and when your daughter took off?

She walks to the door and waits for me there. I come down the hall, open the locks, and we walk to the street door.

– I came home one day and she and Dale were fighting. They stopped when I came in. Amanda ran to her room and Dale retreated to his office.

– What'd you do?

– I went to Amanda's room and asked her if her father had touched her.

– What'd she say?

– She said, Moooom. The next morning she was gone.

– And when you heard about Whitney you didn't call the cops? You didn't worry more about your daughter?

– No, Joseph. Something of that nature occurs and we know who to call. We called Mr. Predo. And he called you. The best man for the job is what he said, I believe.

She points at the door.

– Please.

I open the door and we stand there.

– You still want me to find her?

– Why wouldn't I?

– From what you said she might be better off wherever she is.

She glances at her limo, back at me, and puts a hand lightly on my shoulder.

– Find her, Joseph.

She leans close, her breasts press against my chest.

– Find her and bring her home. If she's out there, he might find her first.

She kisses the edge of my mouth.

– And his interests are becoming… baroque.

My voice husks in my throat.

– What the hell does that?