An Absence of Light

Valerie Heath finally got the stove under control with a good deal of banging and flinging, and then she came around the counter where they were standing in the middle of the room. Smoke was filling the kitchen, and she marched over to a glass wall and pulled apart double sliding glass doors to open the family room to a stone patio and the canal. There were a lot of banana plants and potted palms and the glimmering lights of other houses across the narrow canal. A cabin cruiser was docked immediately across from them.

“Now listen to me,” she said, turning away from the doors and planting herself in front of them, hands on her hips. The terry cloth romper had seen better days. It was stretched out of shape, and its elastic top, having been hoisted up many times too many over her pendulous, sun-speckled bosoms, was oozing down with each flounce of her body. “I don’t know a goddamned thing about… Colleen Synar,” she blurted, one hand flying up from her hip to poke around in her matte black hair before going back to her hip. “I’ve told her”-she nodded at Paula-”all I know about it… her… Synar.”

“Ms. Heath”-Neuman twisted his head around, stretching his neck as if it was stiff-”if you could give us just five minutes…” He let his shoulders slump. “We’ve been working night and day on this; I mean, that’s why we’re here so late. We’re under the gun on the deadline on this thing. If we don’t put an all-out effort into this it could look bad, you know, like American Universal didn’t try to find the beneficiary so we wouldn’t have to pay out the indemnity.”

Valerie Heath stood in front of them and studied them. She was practically devoid of eyelashes, which made her common brown eyes smaller in a face otherwise dominated by generous features, a rather wide mouth-with a tender-looking fever blister in its right corner-heavy cheekbones, and a nose that was somehow masculine in its proportions. Her skin had forfeited a lot of its resiliency and whatever beauty it might have had to the unforgiving Texas coastal sun. She was angry and didn’t try to hide it, but Neuman knew that she had to be curious too. Pissed and curious.

“Five minutes,” she snapped.

“I appreciate this, Ms. Heath,” Neuman said quickly as he guided Paula around a coffee table strewn with magazines and newspapers to a sofa against the wall facing the kitchen. “I really, really do.” They sat down.

Valerie Heath reached down and snatched a pack of cigarettes off the coffee table and lighted the cigarette with a little sports car. When you mashed the trunk, the hood flew up to reveal the wick and flame.

She turned and got a chair from a chrome-and-glass table near the bar. The shorts of her jumpsuit were slightly soiled on the seat, old stains that would no longer wash out, and the limp legs of the misshapen shorts revealed too much of how she was put together in that region, more than she would have wanted anyone to see. But that was the furthest thing from her mind at the moment. As she sat down in the chair facing them across the coffee table, she was not only pissed and curious, she was nervous. She dragged on the cigarette and then held it aloft in her right hand, her elbow resting on her other forearm which lay across her stomach. Neuman noticed her fingernails were short, the dull red polish flaking off. She periodically puckered the side of her mouth that had the fever blister. The lady was tense.

“How long did Ms. Synar live with you?” Neuman asked quickly, getting right to it, making every effort to accommodate her obvious wish for him to get the hell out as soon as possible.

“Two years.”

“Even?”

“What?” She glared at him.

“Two years even?”

“Yeah,” she said acidly, daring him to challenge the fact “Even.”

“Ms. Aldridge checked Los Angeles and New York,” Neuman said. “There aren’t any Synars there.”

Valerie Heath glanced at Paula and shrugged. Not her problem.

“Where did she work when she was living with you?” Neuman had his notebook out and was pretending to take notes, his arms on his knees as he sat forward and read from the notebook on the coffee table.

“You don’t know where she was working?”

“On our policy forms,” Neuman said, sighing hugely and pretending an impatient weariness at having to back up and bring her up to speed, “our policy holders are asked to list their beneficiaries’ name, address, place of employment, date of birth, and Social Security number. Now, since this policy was taken out nearly eight years ago, and had not been updated-people never update them, they should, but they never do-everything on it was stale except her date of birth and Social Security number. Okay? So we had to start from scratch. In the past couple of weeks we’ve come this far, right here to you. And you say you haven’t seen her in almost two years. If I knew where she was working at the time maybe there would be someone there who was close to her and would know more about where she might be or maybe they’re even still in touch with her.”