Remember Me, Irene

3

LUCASMONROE= The Man on the Bus Bench. Try as I might, it was impossible for me to completely accept that equation as the truth.

Lisa, Becky, Sharon, and others overheard Roberta mention his name, and remembered him. Roberta glanced around at their expectant faces and looked uneasy.

“Roberta…,” I said, then shook my head. I couldn’t make sense of what she had just told me.

She put an arm around my shoulders, keeping her voice low as she said, “Look, he wants to have his act together when he sees you.”

I pulled back a little, looking at her face.

“Don’t worry,” she said, misreading my distress, “he’s cleaned up, and I get the feeling that the things he wants to talk to you about areimportant. I suspect that when he makes his case this time, he wants to do it right.”

“Is Lucas a lawyer now?” Becky asked, making us both aware that we were still within earshot of the 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.”

“You know, Andre really is a rat, but he knows some great people.” She was quiet, then added softly, “I met Ben through Andre.”

Claire came earlier in Andre’s lineup than I did. As I recalled, she had one of the more short-lived encounters with him. I was an intern at theExpress the year she married Ben; I remember the sensation caused by Claire’s courtship with him. Ben was widowed, had no children, and was her senior by a quarter of a century. They had now been married for over fifteen years, and all but the most vicious tongues had stopped wagging.

I glanced back over at her. To my surprise, she looked like she was about to cry.

“Claire? What’s wrong?”

She bit her lower lip, hesitating. Claire and I weren’t close friends, partly because we moved in such different circles. I wasn’t sure she would confide in me.

She took a deep breath and said, “I’m worried about Ben. He says he wants to retire.”

“Why are you upset? You’ve been trying to get him to retire for at least five years now.”

She waved a hand in dismissal. “And he hasn’t wanted to. So why now?”

I made the turn on to the road that leads to Seaside Estates, one of Las Piernas’s upper-crust enclaves. The Seaside Country Club golf course was on our right, huge houses on our left. “What does Ben say about it?”

“He says exactly what you said. ‘You’ve wanted me to retire, so I’m retiring.’”

I laughed. “That’s a pretty good imitation of Ben’s voice.”

She smiled a little. “Lots of time listening to him. I suppose I’d be happier about this retirement ifhe seemed happier about it.”

“Most people have mixed feelings about retiring. Ben’s been at the Bank of Las Piernas for a long time-and in a very powerful position in the community. President of a bank that has helped businesses get started, financed much of the growth and development of the city.” I thought of the one person I knew who worked for the Bank of Las Piernas. “The people who work with Ben respect him. My friend Guy St. Germain speaks very highly of Ben as a boss.”

“Guy is an exceptional employee.” She sighed. “Maybe I’m borrowing trouble. It will be great to have Ben all to myself. I don’t know why it bothers me.”

I made a turn that brought me to a security gate. She handed a keycard to me. “You’ll have to guide me from here,” I said, as the gate rolled open.

“Turn right, then keep heading uphill. Sorry to put you to so much trouble.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not like Ben to leave me stranded somewhere,” she said, looking worried again.

“You seem to think this is connected to his retirement. Could something else be troubling him?”

She opened her mouth as if to reply, then closed it.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” After a moment, she said, “I don’t know, maybe it is something else. I worry about his health. He hasn’t been sleeping well, or eating enough. I wake up in the middle of the night, and he’s over at the bedroom window, just staring out into the darkness. Or I’ll find him sitting up in the study at three or four in the morning.”

“Does he give a reason for any of this?”

“No. He just tells me that he didn’t mean to worry me. Says he’s getting old, and…”

“And what?”

She closed her eyes, leaned her head back against the seat. “Sometimes he’ll say, ‘You should marry a younger fellow next time.’”

I didn’t say anything.

“It hurts to hear him say that,” she said. “Makes me wonder if-oh! Turn at the next corner. You can only go right.”

I made the turn. After a short distance, we were in front of another gate. She reached into her bag and pressed a remote control button that caused this gate to open, pushed it again once we were through. We drove down a dark, tree-lined lane that gave way to a long, curving driveway that sloped up to the mansion. There was a Jaguar in the driveway.

“Looks like Ben is home,” I said.

But she was concentrating on the house, a puzzled look on her face. “The lights are out.”

It took me a moment to register what she was saying, because there were plenty of lights on-but then I realized that they were all exterior lights. The house itself was dark.

“Maybe he’s gone to bed,” I said, but she was shaking her head.

I barely noticed her denial, because at that moment, what I at first took to be a berserk, woolly bear came bounding toward the car. As it drew closer, it started barking, and I realized it was not ursine but canine-the biggest dog I have ever seen in my life.

“Don’t jump, Finn!” she called out. Apparently he heard her, or saw the censure on her face. He scrambled to a halt and plopped his rear down just outside the passenger door-close enough to her window to steam it with his breath. Sitting, he was nearly as tall as the car. He started whining. “He’s an Irish wolfhound,” she said, anticipating my question. “Back up, silly,” she said to him with affection. “I can’t get out.”

His response was to lift a paw as big as a saucer and smack it against her window. When he set it down again, Claire drew in a sharp breath.

There was blood on the window.