Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do

25

Martha viewed the body, covered except for her face, through a window, where it rested on a catafalque in the adjoining room. She quickly confirmed that it was Janet.

Jesse ushered her into a small sitting area where she could collect herself.

“I’m ready to leave,” she said after a few minutes. “Thank you for making this less painful than it might have been.”

Jesse nodded.

“Is there anything you’d like to do now,” he said.

“I’d like to go home.”

Jesse helped her into his Explorer, and they set off for Martha’s house.

“Do you have any ideas as to why this happened to her,” she said.

“It’s still under investigation.”

“Have you any suspects?”

“None yet,” Jesse said. “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

“Not at all.”

“Was Janet still living with you?”

“Up until a few months ago she was.”

“Did she have some kind of a job?”

“You might say that.”

“Meaning?”

“She was hooking.”

Jesse didn’t say anything.

“After high school, she went to live in Boston for a while. She thought she’d be able to find a decent job there. But with only a high school degree, and in this economy, nothing opened up for her. She came back home about a year ago, very dispirited.”

Martha was silent for a while.

“She wasn’t terribly communicative when she came home. She slept all day, and then she’d be out until all hours of the night doing God knows what. We weren’t getting along. There was a great deal of tension in the house.”

“And?”

“About six months ago she told me what she was doing.”

“How did you respond to that?”

“I don’t know, Jesse. Obviously I wasn’t happy about it, but I don’t think my opinion mattered to her one way or the other. I tried talking with her. About how she was going about protecting herself. I succeeded only in heightening the tension between us. Shortly after, she moved out.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“No. I hadn’t heard from her since. Somehow I failed her.”

“Perhaps she failed herself,” Jesse said.

They came to a stop in front of Martha’s house. Jesse looked at her.

“Did she have her own room in the house,” he said.

“She did. Yes.”

“May I see it?”

“Of course.”

Jesse stood in the doorway to Janet’s room and looked around. It appeared to be that of an average American teenager. Framed posters of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber hung on the walls. A collection of stuffed animals was neatly arranged on the bed.

Jesse looked through the dresser drawers and into her closet. He searched her desk and found a calendar/diary that he skimmed and then put aside for further examination.

He looked inside her medicine cabinet, but if there had once been anything of interest there, she must have taken it with her.

Nothing else caught his attention. He was just wrapping up when Martha knocked on the door and stepped inside.

“Anything,” she said.

“I found a datebook that I’d like to look at more closely. Would you mind if I borrowed it?”

“Not at all.”

“I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

She looked at him with sad, troubled eyes.

“Thank you for what you did today,” she said. “I’m very grateful.”

“I feel terrible about this. I didn’t do enough for her.”

Martha didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t even recognize her,” Jesse said. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, Martha.”

She looked at him.

“I swear it,” he said.

It was late by the time Jesse got home. He was tired and cranky. He treated himself to a glass of scotch, fixed a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and sat down to study Janet Becquer’s calendar/diary. He read through the pages carefully. On most of the days, there weren’t any notations. A couple of the days were marked with doctor appointments. On certain other days, she had made cryptic notations beside the printed time of day.

On Thursday, April 14, for example, on the line marked four p.m., the letter C had been jotted down.

The same letter showed up on several other pages, as did the letter M. There were two references to the letter R, and another reference to the letter F. There were also references to the letters B, T, and W. There were more puzzling notations, such as the three references to TSS and the one to NSS.

Jesse took a sip of scotch and thought for a while. He couldn’t figure out what it all meant. He stared at the pages until they became a blur. Then he put down the diary, took a final sip of scotch, climbed the stairs, and went to bed.