Out of the Easy(65)

Embarrassed and a bit humiliated, that’s how I felt, and disappointed. Patrick and I made so much sense together. We were comfortable, and he had kissed me. I had constructed the entire scenario in my head of how our relationship would grow and progress. I felt stupid for ever thinking those things. Patrick’s heart belonged to someone else. Sure, Betty Lockwell was an annoying nuisance, but Kitty was a sophisticated young woman.

The conversation dissolved into awkward silence. I picked up Charlie’s heart-shaped box. The red plastic flowers on the top were deformed from months of affection. I pulled off the lid.

I stared down into the box. “Where did he get them?”

Patrick shrugged.

Inside were a pair of Siamese acorns, their beret caps touching, fused at the neck, growing into and out of each other.

We sat on the hardwood floor in silence, our heads resting against Charlie’s bed. The voices and claps from a children’s stickball game filtered in through the open window and floated in front of us on particles of sunlit dust.

I looked at the sheet of paper in my lap. “B-L-V,” I read aloud, trying to stir the uncomfortable silence. “Do you think it’s Believe?” I asked.

He turned slowly to me. “No, I know what it is.”

“You do?”

Patrick nodded. “It’s the title of the first chapter in the book he was working on. Be Love,” he said quietly.

I stared at the sheet of paper and the acorns. I put my arm around Patrick and kissed his head.

And he cried.





FORTY-FOUR


Patrick wanted someone else. I wanted him to be happy, but why couldn’t he be happy with me? I knew the answer. He couldn’t choose me. Patrick wanted a literary life of travel, learning, and social substance. I was a scrappy girl from the Quarter, trying to make good. No matter how I parted my hair, I couldn’t part from the crack I had crawled out of.

I wished I had a friend in the Quarter, someone like Charlotte. Someone I could share secrets with, collapse on her bedroom floor, and spill my guts about Patrick to. I saw so many girls walking arm in arm, laughing, an inexplicable closeness and comfort that they had a protector and confidante. They had someone they could count on.

A man leaned against a car outside the bookshop. He saw me approach and walked to meet me on the sidewalk. It was Detective Langley.

“Miss Moraine. I’m glad I waited. I was hoping I could ask you some additional questions.”

I looked up and down the street, checking to see who was around to report to Frankie.

“We can step inside the shop if you like,” he said.

I unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and walked to the counter. I sucked in a breath to calm my nerves. “What can I help you with, Detective?”

He mopped his wet brow and took out a tattered notepad. “The day you came to the station, you said that Mr. Hearne bought two books.”

I nodded.

“Yeah, the books were found in his hotel room, and there was a receipt in one of them. His wife has told us that the check never cleared. She thought that was odd. The check is listed in the checkbook register that was found on him.”

My mind raced, trying to catch up with my heart. I pointed to the sign near the register. “We don’t take checks, Detective. Perhaps Mr. Hearne wrote the check before he saw the sign and then paid in cash?”

He pointed his pen to the sign. “That’s gotta be it. Thank you.”

“I’ll show you out.”

“One more thing.” He rubbed his head. “I’m sure you know that your mother is being questioned. She was seen with Hearne the night of his death. Do you know where your mother was on New Year’s Eve, Miss Moraine?”

I looked at Detective Langley. His story was obvious. Every Sunday he’d drive to his mother’s for dinner. His mother, probably named Ethel, had meaty ankles, weary gray curls, and wore a flowered housedress. A wiry black hair sprouted from the mole on her chin. She’d shuffle around a hot kitchen all day in preparation for her son’s weekly visit. She’d make something special, perhaps with frothy meringue, for dessert. He’d eat every bite. After his car pulled away, Ethel would wash the dishes, allow herself a slug of blackberry wine, and then fall asleep in the living room chair, still wearing her apron.

“Miss Moraine?” He interrupted my thoughts. “I asked if you know where your mother was on New Year’s Eve.”

“Have you met my mother, Detective?” I asked.

“Yes, I have.”

“Then I’m sure you won’t be surprised when I tell you that we have been estranged for quite some time. I’ve lived upstairs in this bookshop since I was twelve years old.” I stared at the detective. “I’ve never spent New Year’s Eve with my mother, and I have no idea where she was.”

He put his pen in his ear to scratch an itch or dislodge some wax. “Well, the chief wanted me to come talk to you. I told him he was going to a goat’s house for wool, but he’s got a checklist, you know.”

Coming to me was like going to a goat’s house?

“So, Miss Moraine, if you weren’t with your mother, where were you on New Year’s Eve?”

“I was right here, upstairs in my room.” I motioned toward the back stairs and regretted it the moment my hand moved.