The Last Place

CHAPTER 9

Tess sailed out into Tuesday morning, optimistic about life in general and hopeful about her work in particular. It was the kind of fresh spring day that made everyone but T. S. Eliot feel hopeful. She just felt in her bones that today’s homicide, the one with the skimpiest file, was likely to yield the greatest dividends.

That feeling vanished when a dead woman opened the door to her home and invited Tess in for tea.

The brick Cape Cod in far northwest Baltimore County was absurdly small, but so was its tenant. The woman behind the storm door was not even five feet tall. The doll in this dollhouse had long dark hair, wide blue eyes, and pink-white cheeks. She looked delicate and fragile, the type of woman who inspired solicitous feelings in men and women alike.

But she was undeniably, indisputably alive, so Tess first assumed she must be a relative or friend of the deceased.

“I’m looking for someone who might know something about Julie Carter,” Tess had begun.

“I can’t imagine anyone who could know more than I do,” she said, projecting her voice so it could be heard through the door’s acrylic covering. The voice was unexpected, dry as beef jerky. It sounded Western to Tess, not in its accent so much as in its smoky, sun-baked timbre, which was suggestive of mesas and cactus and turquoise jewelry. “But I don’t much care for someone asking questions about me.”

“About you?”

“Well, I’m Julie Carter. Seems to me you should know that, if you’re going around and looking into me, asking questions about me. What are you?”

Not who, but what, Tess noted. That choice told her quite a bit about Julie Carter’s life, the kind of person who was apt to show up on her doorstep.

“It was my information… my understanding-” There did not seem to be any polite or effective way to tell someone she was included on a list of homicide victims. “I’m a private investigator, looking into some old cases. I was told you were… dead. Clearly, there’s been a mistake.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Some days I feel like I’m dead.” She folded her arms and leaned against the doorjamb. The house sat off by itself, as if it might have been a farm before this part of the county was developed. “You come up from Baltimore?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s farther than you think, isn’t it? From Baltimore, I mean.”

“A bit, yes.” Tess was confused. She had gotten the bum’s rush in considerably less awkward situations. But Julie Carter appeared to be prolonging their encounter, enjoying it.

“Yeah, I thought it was a real find, this place. Cheap, and it doesn’t look that far from I-83. And it isn’t, as the crow flies, but I’m not a crow. It takes at least an hour if you want to get to Baltimore, have a little fun.” She smiled broadly. “Which I do. Look, you wanna come in, have a cup of coffee?”

Why not. “Why not?”

“Cool.” She clapped her hands, the way a little girl might show delight, and unlatched the door. “Except it has to be tea. I just remembered I don’t have any coffee. That’s another thing about living out here in the sticks. It’s not like you can run out and grab something at the corner store. There is no corner store. There is no corner. ”Course, I guess someone who works at a grocery store ought to always have groceries, right? But when my shift finally ends, all I want to do is get out. So I never have any food in the house. Is that ironic or what?“

Literal-minded Tess was tempted to say no, this was not irony, merely absentmindedness. But she sensed something needy beneath Julie Carter’s cheerful banter. She must be lonely, a young single woman plopped down in the middle of these middle-class families. “Tea is always nice.”

“So, someone thinks I’m dead,” Julie said, putting a kettle on to boil and bringing out a basket of teabags, no two alike. “I get ‘em at restaurants. You oughta see my mustard collection. And ketchup. I’ve got a lot of ketchup. How did I die?”

“You didn’t, obviously.”

“I know. It’s probably some other Julie Carter. I get that all the time.”

“Probably. But I did have this address. In fact, your name and address were all I had.”

“So, was I murdered?”

Tess was so taken with Julie’s foghorn voice that she wasn’t really listening to the words, just the tobacco-cured vowel sounds. Julie was a heavy smoker. Being inside the house was like crawling into a pack of Marlboros.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Was I murdered?”

“Your name was on a list of open homicides. Murder is a legal term.” She sounded priggish, but her tone didn’t seem to bother Julie Carter.

“Gunshot? Knife? Poison?” The teakettle sang, a muted whistle, and her hostess shook a basket of sweeteners at Tess, hundreds of white and blue and pink packets.

“I don’t have that information. There’s no information to have. You’re alive.”

“I once thought about being a private investigator. But I think I’m going to open my own flower shop instead.” She laughed as if this were uproarious. “Who am I kidding? If I don’t get my ass in gear, I’m never gonna accomplish anything.”

“I don’t know,” Tess said, assuming she was expected to object. “You have a nice house here.” It was neat and well-kept, even if the white walls had yellowed from cigarette smoke.

“A rental. I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for this guy I once dated. He convinced me to move out here, then dumped my ass. The stories I could tell you. I sure can pick ‘em.”

It occurred to Tess that the error that had sent her to Julie Carter’s door might at least be rooted in fact.

“Bad boyfriends?”

“Nothing but.”

“Have you ever been… stalked?” Somehow, this seemed more acceptable than asking a stranger if she had been hit or assaulted. “Had to take out a restraining order?”

“Most of the men I get involved with can’t be restrained. That’s the problem. It’s gotten to the point where, when I start dating a guy, I feel like saying, ”Look, why don’t you just sleep with one of my friends now and get it over with?“ Honest. I figure if he did it in the beginning, he’d get it out of his system and I wouldn’t feel cheated on.”

“Oh.” That kind of restraint.

“They’re different, aren’t they?”

“Who?”

“Men. What else are we talking about? Although, I gotta say, when I find a good one, I get bored. The good ones can be so boring. Like the guy who wanted me to move up here. He paid the rent and all, so I thought, Why not? But he was so dull, never wanted to do anything, and got mad when my friends came by. He said I had to choose, them or him. Then he left, so I didn’t have to choose after all. What are you going to do? Go with boring and faithful, or exciting and jerky?” She fixed her eyes on Tess, as if she were some oracle.

“I think that changes, depending on where you are in your life.”

“No, I mean what do you do? You look like fun, you’ve got a hot job. You married? Or are you still running free?”

“I-why, neither. My boyfriend’s great.” Crow was great. Saying it out loud reminded her just how great he was, how lucky she was. “He’s warm and funny and spontaneous, loyal as a dog.”

“No such thing,” Julie said. Her incongruously deep voice gave her words an unearned authority.

“How old are you anyway?”

“Twenty-two.”

“You’re awfully young. You can’t have had that many boyfriends.”

“I’ve had enough. All ages, too, all the way up to thirty.”

“Thirty. Wow.”

Julie didn’t catch the sarcasm. “And that was when I was seventeen. But I don’t like old men. They’re boring. How old is your boyfriend?”

Tess did the math. “Twenty-five.”

“Oh, a younger man.” Julie Carter’s certitude on this fact stung a little. Tess liked to think she could pass for twenty-five, at least. “Well, maybe that’s the way to go. After thirty, I mean. But I like a guy who has spending money. Is that too much to ask? A nice guy, good sex, a little money so we can go out on the weekends, not count pennies. Last guy I went out with got mad when I ordered a third rum and Coke. You know what he said? He said, ”You’re already drunk enough to screw me.“ I said, ”You know what, honey? I’ll never be that drunk.“ Walked out of that bar and hitchhiked home. But that’s another story.”

“Yes,” Tess agreed, feeling a little dazed by all these words, all this information.

“A lot has happened to me. I mean-a lot. But I’m alive and never been anything but. In fact, I’ve never had stitches, even though I almost cut my toe off once.” She propped her bare foot on the table and grabbed her second toe, as if beginning a game of Little Piggy. The second toe was considerably longer than the big one. The foot was absurdly small, even for someone as tiny as Julie Carter, plump and white as a baby’s.

“See that?”

“See what?”

“My scar. I was walking in the surf at Ocean City after graduation- you know, we all drove down, got a motel room: six girls, six blow-dryers, blew the fuses every night-and I felt this little tug, like a fish nipped me. I said to my friend, ”I’m going up to my towel, there’s fish in this water.“ Then I saw my toe, hanging by, like, a thread, and I started to scream. There was a boy on the beach, said he was premed at Maryland, he wrapped his T-shirt around my foot. They took me to the clinic on Fifty-third Street, but they didn’t know what to do. But there was no-what did he call it?-no topical skin loss. The doctor in Salisbury just patted it back in place and I was fine. I was on crutches a whole week. You want to talk about a good way to meet boys, walk around on crutches.”

“It looks… good.” The story seemed confusing to Tess, implausible even. The thick skin at the base of the toe didn’t look like any scar she had ever seen. But the story also had made her queasy, and she didn’t want to ask questions lest Julie Carter provide more information.

“So, I’ve never had stitches, never been in a hospital at all. Except when I was born, I guess. I’ve never even had a near-death experience. That’s when your life passes before your eyes, right? I hope when I do, it’s not just me stacking cans at Mars. What a bummer that would be.”

Julie was rocking in her seat now, beating her hands on the kitchen table, ignoring her tea. She sniffed once, twice. The tip of her nose was pink as a rabbit’s. Tess finally put it together then: Julie’s need to get to Baltimore on a regular basis, the rapid-fire speech, the eyes that were all iris. It might be speed, it might be cocaine or even crack. But it was something that juiced you up, not down.

And now Julie was moving in to close the deal, as sure of her mark as any Fuller Brush guy, any tin man.

“Look,” she said. “I know I just met you, but you seem so nice. Not stuck up. There’s been this terrible computer mix-up at work. The checks are, like, frozen inside the computer because the bank’s computer crashed and we’re not going to get paid for another two days, after they make a wire transfer or something like that. Could you lend me a little money so I could get some food for the house? I’m good for it, you know. But I live check to check, and when the check is late I’m hosed.”

The easy thing would have been to hand over a twenty. The futile thing would have been to lecture, or even call attention to the bullshit. Tess chose to play Julie’s game, Julie’s way, piling lie on top of lie.

“Gosh, I wish I could. I don’t have any cash on me, or even my ATM card. I’m overdrawn myself. Got a little out of control, playing the Delaware slots last month. And the people I’m working for, they haven’t paid me a dime yet. I have to wait until the end of the month to see dollar one.”

Julie sniffed once, twice. “I guess that makes sense. Because whoever told you I’m dead doesn’t know their shit, do they? That is some weird-ass job you’ve got, going to people’s doors and telling them they’re dead.”

Tess thought so too.