Last to Know: A Novel(16)

Bea seemed to think for a moment, then she shrugged. “If you’d ever seen my mother I believe you would know what I mean. She was wild. ‘Flirtatious’ would be a kind word. Oh God,” she wailed in sudden despair. “The truth is my mother was a mess! She drank too much. She abused alcohol. She’d been in rehab many times, and was doing drugs whenever she could get her hands on them.” She lifted her eyes and stared from one man to the other. “What do you think caused the explosion anyway?”

Harry shrugged while Rossetti stared silently at his neatly filed fingernails.

Bea answered for them. “It was methamphetamine. She knew how to make crystal meth. It’s so simple even I could have done it. Not that I would of course.” She glanced up at them again. “She had a friend. His name is Divon. I never knew his last name. I never really knew him at all but she went out with him, partied with him … he got her the fixings, taught her how to make it.”

“And where were you when all this was going on?”

Harry’s question seemed to take Bea by surprise. “Why, I was just … home … I guess. Holding the fort, you might say.”

“You were not in college? Working at a job?”

“I dropped out of college after a year. Mom needed me. She was in rehab again, killing herself with all this other stuff.”

“What other ‘stuff’ exactly?” Rossetti focused in on her again and Bea gave him that wide blue-eyed look again.

“You name it, she used it. The first I remember as a kid is cocaine. There was always bags of it around, little piles on coffee tables with rolled-up ten-dollar bills just waiting to scoop it up.”

“You never tried it?” Harry’s tone was neutral but he knew she sensed his skepticism.

“You forget, I grew up with this. I saw what it did to people. One thing I will never touch in my life, Detective Jordan, is drugs.”

Remembering what she had said about her mother’s promiscuity, Harry wondered if she had the same negative reaction to men as she did to drugs.

“It’s funny,” Bea was saying now, smiling as though indeed it was something amusing she was about to tell them. “I always thought she would blow herself up with the meth; the ingredients are notoriously volatile. But you know what really started it?”

They stared silently at her, waiting for her to tell them.

“My mother smoked, Detective Jordan. She also liked her hair in a bouffant style, back-combed, piled up on top, and sprayed firmly into place. She’d gotten all dressed up in this sparkly top and white pants, she’d put on her lipstick, her lashes, arranged the hair. I can see her now, sitting back in her chair looking at herself in the mirror, misting her hair from the spray can. And then she lit a cigarette.”

“And…?”

Bea Havnel looked up at the two of them and said, “And then the hairspray ignited and she just sort of went up in flames. Then everything else caught fire and I was running out of there. And then the meth exploded…”

“Jesus,” Rossetti said.

“Your hair was on fire,” Harry said. “You threw yourself into the lake…”

“Actually it was a wig, my mother made me wear it when she could no longer stand looking at her young blond daughter.”

Bea’s tone was bitter, the first time Harry had heard that.

“I was trying to get the wig off, I burned my wrist.” She showed the bandage. “It must have come off in the water when I fell in.”

Harry thought the story about the wig was odd, and besides she had not “fallen in,” but he let that pass. He was simply glad she had survived without major burns. He reminded himself to ask if the wig had been found, washed up maybe near the house. As a detective he was used to checking every piece of relevant information, nothing against Bea Havnel, who he now had to help.

“Thank you for telling us. You were very brave,” he said gently.

“What will happen to me now? Am I going to be arrested?”

“On what charge?”

“Well, you know, sort of … accessory to drugs, her death. Isn’t that what usually happens?”

“Only under suspicious circumstances,” Rossetti hastened to reassure her.

Bea smoothed the terry robe and gave him that smile. “What will I do now, then?”

“I’ll call social services,” Harry told her. “They’ll fix you up tomorrow, take care of you, get you some clothes, find you a place to stay.”

“Oh, please,” Bea said quickly. “There’s money. Just book me into the Ritz-Carlton. I’ll ask one of the nurses to rush out to Target, pick up a few things for me. Target’s so good,” she added, solemn now. “They have everything. I always shop there.”

Harry was surprised that she had money of her own. “And what about relatives, Miss Havnel? Who should we call, ask to come and look after you?”

“I have no relatives.” Bea looked astonished he had even asked. “I don’t even have friends. We never stayed in one place long enough, and also because of my mother, you see. I mean, nobody ever wanted to know me … except maybe that nice woman across the lake, the one with the lovely family. Rose Osborne. She always had a smile and a wave. I used to watch that family. Roman, the twins, Diz, I envied them … I thought they were like real people.”