Stranger in Paradise

“Okay, whyn’t you see if you can find a clue or something.”

They both nodded. And as Jesse walked toward Buddy Hall’s cruiser, parked behind Jesse’s car, they both took out flashlights and began to walk the lawn, carefully.

“What happened,” Jesse said to Buddy Hall.

“She must have snuck out the back,” Buddy said. “I’m parked right outside her house all night until I hear the radio call about a body on Paradise Neck. So I call in, and Bobby Martin’s working the desk, and he tells me Molly called it in to him, and that it’s the Franklin broad. And I said, ‘Jesus, she hasn’t left the house.’ And I call Moll on her cell phone and she says yes it is Franklin and she’s been shot and I better get over there. So here I am.”

“You check her house?” Jesse said.

“No, I come straight here. Should I have?”

“It’s okay,” Jesse said. “You help Molly and Suit on the crime scene. I’ll go over there.”

“Yeah, okay. Jesse, I’m sorry if I fucked up. I didn’t think she’d sneak away.”

“We’ll play it as it lays, Buddy,” Jesse said. “Go look for clues…and don’t step on any.”

Buddy Hall nodded his head very hard and hustled toward the wide lawn that led up to the now-empty school. Jesse followed, looking at the ground, walking carefully until he got to Molly.

“Moll,” he said. “You run things here. Make sure everything is gone and cleaned up and no trace before those little kids get here at eight a.m.”

“Absolutely,” Molly said.

A state car pulled up behind the other cars and parked, and a smallish man got out with a doctor’s bag.

“Okay,” Jesse said. “The state ME. I want a report as soon as he can get us one.”

“I’ll tell him,” Molly said.

They watched as the ME trudged toward the body.

“Suit’s got a girlfriend out here,” Jesse said. “Doesn’t he?”

Molly nodded.

“And she’s, ah, inappropriate, probably married,” Jesse said.

“Yes.”

“And you discovered him, and he’s made you promise not to tell.”

“Yes. I gave him my word.”

“But you can’t resist busting his balls a little.”

Molly smiled.

“Could you?” she said.

“Probably not,” Jesse said. “One thing, though. If who he’s banging becomes any kind of issue to a case, I need to know.”

“I understand that, Jesse.”

“Okay,” Jesse said. “I’ll trust your judgment.”

“You can,” Molly said.

“I know,” Jesse said.

He walked back to his car and got in and headed back across the causeway toward Mrs. Franklin’s house on Sewall Street.

33.

Now that he had to investigate her murder, Jesse decided to call her by her actual name, Fiona Francisco. In which case he could also think of the daughter as Amber Francisco, and stop messing around with the Franklin-slash-Francisco construct in his head.

He parked in front of her house. There were lights on in the front room. He tried the front door. It was locked. He walked around to the side where a tiny alley squeezed between two buildings. Jesse went down the alley. Behind the house was a tiny brick patio that was at a level lower than the front of the house and was accessed by a door in the basement. The door was open. Jesse looked around the patio. Looming behind it was the back end of another old house. To the left was a small set of stone steps that led up to a driveway at street level. The driveway opened onto a side street that ran perpendicular to Sewall. Jesse looked at it and nodded to himself.

He went in through the open door. He was in a cellar that had been converted, probably in the 1950s from the look of it, into a playroom. Pine-paneled walls, vinyl-tile floors, Celotex tile ceiling. The furnace and electrical panel and hot-water heater were in an alcove. Jesse went up the stairs on the far end and into the living room. It smelled like a tavern. There was a half-full bowl of bright orange cheese puffs on the coffee table in front of the shabby couch. There were four beer cans upright on the coffee table and one on its side. All of them were empty. A pink crocheted coverlet lay half turned back on the couch. Cheese puff detritus speckled the couch and the floor near the couch. The television was on, some sort of infomercial. The kitchen was empty, dirty dishes on the counter. A dirty frying pan on the stove. Jesse opened the refrigerator. Twelve cans of beer, some Velveeta, a loaf of white bread, some peanut butter, and three Diet Cokes. On the counter next to an unwashed coffee cup was a bottle of multivitamins.

That oughta balance everything out, Jesse thought.

He walked through the rest of the small house. The beds were unmade. Dirty laundry lay in piles in both bedrooms. There was a still-sodden towel on the bathroom floor. He went back to the living room and leaned against the front door. To his left was a fireplace that had been cold a long time. Over it was a small mantelpiece, and on the mantel was a school photograph of somebody who probably used to be Amber.