The Bitterest Pill

Thirteen

After the meeting in the synagogue’s basement in Salem, Jesse debated whether to head straight home or to do what he was about to do. Though he had put in his work at the meeting, the kid in front of the funeral home kept pushing his way into Jesse’s consciousness. Some of Heather’s friends were at the viewing, but he could speak to them tomorrow, after the funeral. The kid with the blue eyes had been crying, but if he was that close to Heather, why not go in like everyone else? During the coffee break at the meeting Jesse realized the kid outside the funeral home was acting guilty. The question was, guilty of what?

One of the things Jesse had learned early on in uniform was to watch the crowd that gathered at a crime scene. Some of them were there out of idle curiosity. Some were simply nosy. Some had no life and fed off the woes of others. But sometimes the guilty party was right there in the crowd, behind the sawhorses or the yellow tape, watching. They were curious, too. But their curiosity was neither idle nor innocent. Some, like arsonists, got off on seeing the results of their handiwork. They enjoyed watching the thing they’d lit up burn down. Others hung around to see what they could see and hear what they could hear about the investigation. It was amazing what you could learn at a crime scene if you knew how to observe one. Still others felt guilty for what they had done. They were the ones you saw in movies, the ones detectives said wanted to be caught. That was how the kid had seemed to Jesse, and that was why Jesse was standing next to the Pembroke Art Gallery and at the door of the adjoining warehouse.

He pressed the buzzer to Maryglenn’s apartment/studio above the warehouse. He knew he could just as well have waited until morning and gone back to the high school, but there was something else on his mind besides the kid. Yesterday at lunch, both Daisy and Maryglenn had seemed odd. And when Jesse had asked about Maryglenn’s past, she changed the subject. Through the big old door Jesse heard Maryglenn coming down the steps.

“Who is it?”

“Jesse Stone.”

The locks clicked and the door pulled back. Jesse was surprised to see Maryglenn out of her usual artist’s black pants and shirt. Instead she was wearing an elaborately patterned Asian robe made of a fabric that hung loosely off parts of her body and tightly to others.

“I’m not used to seeing you out of uniform,” he said, smiling.

There was a brief moment of confusion on her face. Then, when she realized what Jesse meant, she smiled back at him.

“I do indeed own clothing that isn’t black or splattered with paint. Do your boxers have your badge number embroidered into them?”

“How did you know?”

She shook her head at him. “What’s up?”

“I need to talk. Can I come up?”

“This official business or some other kind of business?”

“A little of both, I guess.”

“Come on. Lock the door behind you.”

Jesse had been in Maryglenn’s place before, seen some of her work in progress, but those visits were during the madness surrounding the most violent incidents in Paradise since the assault on Stiles Island. This would be different on many levels. He knew it. She knew it, too. After scaling the stairs, Maryglenn pushed the door open and gestured for Jesse to go on in.

“Tea?” she asked, closing her apartment door behind him. “Coffee?”

“I just came from an AA meeting.”

She seemed to understand. “Lots of coffee and cigarette breaks.”

“Exactly. How do you know?”

There it was again, the smile disappearing just like at lunch. “Water?”

“Fine.”

Maryglenn dug a plastic bottle out of her fridge and handed it to Jesse. Their hands touched as she gave it to him, and there was a spark there. They both felt it and they both knew it. But Jesse twisted off the cap and drank, while he stared out the windows on the backside of her studio and admired the view of the harbor area and of Stiles Island.

She cleared her throat. “Jesse, not that I’m unhappy you’re here, but do you suppose you could fill me in on your reasons.”

Jesse told her he had been at Heather’s viewing. He described the kid pacing out front, smoking a cigarette. “He had dark blond hair and red-rimmed blue eyes.”

“Oh,” Maryglenn said, obviously disappointed, and plopped into a beat-up and scarred brown leather chair. “That’s Chris G.”

“G.?”

“Chris Grimm,” she said. “Told me once the family had changed their name from Grimolkowicz.”

Jesse laughed. “I could understand that. Tough name to handle. Tell me about him.”

“Kind of a shy, intense kid. A lot going on inside his head.”

“Did you ever see him together with Heather?”

“Not that I recall. Different types, Chris and Heather. She was a cheerleader and he was, you know, the brooding punk type. An outsider.”

“You sound sympathetic to him.”

“I was him, sort of,” she said. “Artists aren’t usually the popular kids with the rah-rah, sis-boom-bah ethic. You were a star athlete, so you probably knew lots of Heathers.”

Jesse wanted to deny it, but lying wasn’t his thing. “I did.”

Then he did something he couldn’t quite believe he was doing. He walked over to where Maryglenn was sitting, put down his bottled water, and lifted her out of the chair. He started to say something but just kissed her instead. The first kiss was a tentative one. He had to be certain he hadn’t misread her. The way she kissed him back indicated that he hadn’t, and things took their course from there.