The Girls He Adored

52

For a motel that rented rooms by the day or hour, the beds in the Sleep-Tite were fairly comfortable. The alarm on Pender's watch woke him from a sound sleep at seven. At seven-thirty he phoned Thom Davies, the British-born database specialist.

“Morning, T. D. Hope I didn't wake you.”

“Pender? For God's sake, man, it's eight-thirty on a Sunday morning.”

“It's only seven-thirty here, and I'm up.”

“Central time? I thought you were keeping regular in Prunedale.”

“I'm in Dallas. How's my account in the old favor bank?”

“I believe you still owe me several lunches and your firstborn child.”

“Care to make a deposit on my second-born?” He told Davies what he was looking for.

“I'll get on it first thing tomorrow morning,” said Davies.

“Not quite what I had in mind.”

“Ed, it's Sunday morning.”

“He's averaging two murders a day since he escaped, Thom. You do the math.”

“How about a shit and a shower? Do I have time for a shit and a shower?”

“You could probably skip the shower,” replied Pender. “I doubt there's going to be anybody else in the office.”

Plano was a northeastern suburb of Dallas, though the town had enough of a history that it preferred not to think of itself as suburban. “It's plain to see/Plano is the place to be,” read the Chamber of Commerce sign.

The Hughes house was a white colonnaded near-mansion in the pricey Lakeside addition. Pender, a Yankee to the bone, half expected Hattie McDaniels or Butterfly McQueen to open the front door. Instead the maid who answered the doorbell was Hispanic; Pender wondered if that represented progress.

The maid informed Pender that Senor Hughes wasn't home, but he could hear voices out back. He turned and started down the walk, then cut around the side of the house. Sure enough, Horton Hughes was sitting poolside, wearing a white polo shirt and twill slacks, Italian loafers, no socks, reclining on an upholstered chaise longue, reading the Sunday paper. Behind him a tanned twentysomething brunette in a well-filled white bikini was swimming laps in the azure pool. Whitewashed wrought-iron chairs were grouped around a whitewashed wrought iron table shaded by a yellow canvas umbrella.

Hughes looked up. “Who the hell are you?”

“Special Agent Pender, FBI.” As he flashed his credentials, Pender realized he must look like day-old shit in his wrinkled plaid sport coat, with his bald head clumsily bandaged under a bloodstained tweed hat.

“Is it Donna?” asked Hughes. “Have they found Donna?”

It seemed to Pender that there was a strange note of ambivalence to the tone, as if Hughes weren't entirely sure which answer he was hoping for, yes, no, dead, alive. He decided to Columbo the man.

“Well sir, Mr. Hughes, we think we've identified the individual she left with. May I ask you a few questions?”

“I suppose,” Hughes answered reluctantly. “But we've been through all this.”

“Aren't you going to introduce me to the young lady?” Pender nodded toward the girl in the pool.

“That's Honey.”

She rolled onto her back and waved, then went back to her laps. Pender asked Hughes if Honey were his daughter, and received a terse, thin-lipped “No.”

Now Pender understood why Hughes had seemed so ambivalent about Donna-he'd turned her in for a newer model.

In response to Hughes's shouted orders, the maid brought out another china cup and saucer for Pender and poured his coffee for him. Pender sat with his back to the pool and asked Hughes to tell him about Donna's disappearance.

“Is there really anything to be gained by going through all this again?” asked Hughes. “I've told the police, I was out of town that week. I got home, Donna was gone, along with her suitcase, her good jewelry, and her Lexus. I haven't heard from her since.”

“Do you know which clothes she packed?”

“I'm afraid I didn't pay all that much attention to Donna's clothes, other than that she bought too many and they cost too much.”

Two aggressive non-answers so far. Pender decided to abandon the affective approach and push back a little. Though he could empathize with the haughty rich, put himself in their shoes for the sake of an interview, as a poor boy from Cortland Pender had no objection to trying the opposite approach.

“But the jewelry, that you had no problem identifying as missing?” he asked in a deliberately provocative manner.

“Of course not. I bought most of it for her myself. And I can't say I approve of your tone, Agent Prender.”

Oh-ho. “That's Pender. Had Mrs. Hughes given any indication that she was troubled or unhappy?”

“No more than usual.” Hughes leaned forward as if to impart a confidence. “I've never pretended we had an ideal marriage, Agent Pender — is that right? — but frankly, that's none of your goddamned business.”

“How about Honey there? Did she know Mrs. Hughes?”

Hughes shoved his chair back from the table, the metal feet screeching on the patio tiles, and rose haughtily to his feet. “This interview is over, Agent Pender. If you have any further questions, contact my-”

Pender ignored the dramatics, took a sip from the china cup; it really was very good coffee. “Hey there, Honey,” he called over his shoulder-his back was still to the pool.

“Hey, G-man,” called the girl.

“Did you know Mrs. Hughes?”

“I surely did-she was my momma's best friend.”

Pender turned around, an arm draped over the back of his chair. “Does your momma know you're sleeping with her best friend's husband?”

“Why not?” replied Honey. “She did.”

“Just a goddamn minute,” said Hughes.

Pender turned back to him. He could hear Honey climbing out of the pool behind him, breathing hard, dripping water onto the tiles. “I like interviewing her a whole lot better than you, Mr. Hughes. Think her parents would be equally forthcoming?”

The girl padded across the tiles, toweling off her long black hair. The combination of the raised arms and the vigorous toweling imparted an interesting motion to her bosom. “You want to talk to Momma, you better get there before her third mimosa. As for Daddy, he's so long gone the only way she even remembers his name is she reads it off the alimony checks.”

“How about you then, Honey? Did you see Mrs. Hughes before her disappearance?”

Pender looked down at his coffee cup as she wrapped the towel around her head in a turban and adjusted her bikini top unselfconsciously, then sat down next to him and poured herself a cup of coffee from the silver carafe. Hughes sat down as well, somewhat anticlimactically.

“Sure, about two weeks before. And I was not screwing Horty here until the bed was good and cold, I'll have you know.”

She was a spoiled little rich bitch, but Pender found himself liking her-at least she was honest. An odd crime statistic he'd run across somewhere surfaced in his mind: wealthy Plano, Texas, had the highest per capita rate of teenage heroin-related deaths in the country in 1996 or '97, he couldn't remember which. “Were there any signs she was having an affair?”

“I can't picture it. I mean, I can't even picture her doin' it with Horty. The woman did not exactly ex-hude sexuality. 'Course, last time I saw her she didn't know about Horty and Momma-walkin' in on them the way she did mighta put a little itch in her britches, payback being a way of life 'round here.”

“Is that true, Mr. Hughes? Mrs. Hughes found you in bed with her best friend?”

No answer. Pender didn't press it. Oh, Donna, he thought, to the tune of the old Richie Valens song. No wonder you ran away from home. Part of him wanted to believe that she'd run away with someone other than Casey, but it didn't seem likely. If she'd been poor, then sure, maybe she'd have hit the road and not made contact for a year. But she was far from poor, and in Pender's experience, nobody walked away from money.

They did sometimes walk away with it, though. “I understand all of Mrs. Hughes's bank accounts were untouched, Mr. Hughes. And of course there's been no credit card activity. Would she have had any other source of cash readily available to her?”

“I've already answered that question,” said Hughes.

Oh-ho. Foolish answer. Guilty answer. It probably wouldn't mean much for the investigation, but several of the other strawberry blonds had disappeared with amounts of cash proportionate to their means. “What was it, a wall safe?”

“I don't know what-”

“If you tell me here and now, I promise it goes no further. If not, the IRS is always happy to cooperate with the FBI-and vice versa.”

“Yes, it was a wall safe.”

“Excellent. How much did she leave with?”

“Twenty grand in hundreds and twenties, best I could tell.”

“Good enough,” said Pender, who over the years had developed a sixth sense about just how far you could push an interview. “Thank you for your cooperation. And now I'll leave you two to your Sunday. Here's my card-use the sky pager number if you think of anything. And Honey, if I could get your last name and your mother's address?”

“It's Comb. I was just heading home myself-you can follow me if you want.”

“Honey Comb,” repeated Pender, amused.

“Don't even,” said the girl. “I've already heard every joke there is.”