Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 27

apart. Her eyes were hazel, too narrow and too heavily lined with black, the lashes stubby and crusty with mascara. A mean look, Vanlees had called it. Nikki thought tough was a better word.

"And when was the last time you saw Jillian?"

"Friday. She stopped in on her way to see the psychic vampire."

"You don't approve of Dr. Brandt? Do you know him?"

She squinted through the haze of smoke. "I know he's a moneysucking

leech who doesn't give a d.a.m.n about helping anyone but himself. I kept telling her to dump him and get a woman therapist. He was the last thing she needed. All he was interested in was keeping his hand in Daddy's pocket."

"Do you know why she was seeing him?"

She looked just over Liska's shoulder and out the window. "Depression.

Unresolved stuff with her parents' divorce and her mom and her stepfather.

The usual family s.h.i.t, right?"

"Glad to say I wouldn't know. Did she tell you specifics?"

"No."

Lie, Nikki thought. "Did she ever do drugs that you know of?"

"Nothing serious."

"What's that mean?"

"A little weed once in a while when she was wired."

"Who'd she buy it from?"

Fine's expression tightened, the scars on her face seeming darker andshinier. "A friend."

Meaning herself, Liska figured. She spread her hands. "Hey, I'm notinterested in busting anybody's a.s.s over a little weed. I just want toknow if Jillian could have had an enemy in that line."

"No. She hardly ever did it anyway. Not like when she lived in Europe.

She was into everything there-s.e.x, drugs, booze. But she kicked all thatwhen she came here."

"Just like that? She comes over here and lives like a nun?"

Fine shrugged, tapping off her cigarette. "She tried to kill herself. Iguess that changes a person."

"In France? She tried to kill herself?"

"That's what she told me. Her stepfather locked her up in a mentalhospital for a while. Ironic, seeing as how she was going crazy becauseof him."

"How's that?"

"He was f.u.c.king her. She actually believed he was in love with her for awhile. She wanted him to divorce her mother and marry her."

She related the information in an almost offhand manner, as if that kindof behavior were the norm in her world. "She ended up taking a bunch ofpills. Stepdaddy had her put away. When she got out, she came backhere."

Liska scribbled the news in a personal shorthand no one but she couldread, excitement making it all the more illegible. She'd hit the motherlode of dirt here. Kovac would love it. "Did her stepfather ever comehere to see her?"

"No. The suicide thing freaked him out, I guess. Jillie said he nevereven came to see her in the loony bin." She sighed a cloud of smoke andstared off past the blond guy. "It's sad what pa.s.ses for love, isn't.i.t?"

"What kind of mood was she in Friday?"

The bony shoulders lifted and fell. "I don't know. Kind of wired, Iguess. It was busy in here. We didn't have time to talk. I told her I'dcall her Sat.u.r.day."

"And did you?"

"Yeah. Got the machine. I left a message, but she never called back."

She stared out the window again, but without seeing anything in thestreet. Looking back to the weekend. Wondering if anything she could have done differently might have prevented a tragedy. Nikki had seen the expression many times. Tears washed across Michele Fine's mean eyes and she pressed her wide, scarred mouth into a line.

"I just figured she stayed over at her dad's," she said, her throat tightening on the words. "I thought about trying to catch her Sunday, but then .. . I just didn't.. .."

"What'd you do Sunday?"

She wagged her head a little. "Nothing. Slept late. Walked around the lakes. Nothing."

She pressed her free hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut,

fighting for composure. Color flooded her pale face as she held her breath against the need to cry. Liska waited a moment.

The old guys were arguing now about performance art.

"How is p.i.s.sing in a bottle full of crucifixes art?" Beret Man demanded.

The goatee spread his hands. "It makes a statement! Art makes a statement!"

The blond guy turned his paper over to the want ads and snuck a look at Michele. Liska gave him the cop glare and he went back to his reading.

"What about the. rest of the weekend?" she asked, coming back to Fine.

"What'd you do after work Friday night?"

"Why?" The suspicion was instantaneous, edged with affront and a little bit of panic.

"It's just routine. We need to establish where Jillian's family and friends were in case she might have tried to contact them."

"She didn't."

"You were home, then?"

"I went to a late movie, but I have a machine. She would have left a message."

"Did you ever stay over at Jillian's apartment?"

Fine sniffed, wiped her eyes and nose with her hand, and took another

ragged puff on her cigarette. Her hand was shaking. "Yeah, sometimes. We wrote music together. Jillie won't perform, but she's good."

In and out of present tense when she talked about her friend. That was

always a difficult transition for people to make after a death.

"We found some clothes in the dresser of the second bedroom that didn't look to be hers."

"That's my stuff. She's way the h.e.l.l over by the river. Sometimes we'd

sit up late working on a song and I'd just stay over."

"Do you have a key to her place?"

"No. Why would I? I didn't live there."

"What kind of housekeeper is she?"

"What difference does that make?"

"Neat? Sloppy?"

Fine fussed, impatient with what she didn't understand. "Sloppy.

She left stuff everywhere--clothes, dishes, ashtrays. What difference

does it make? She's dead."

She ducked her head then, and reddened and struggled as another wave of emotion hit on the heels of that final statement. "She's dead.

He burned her. Oh, G.o.d." A pair of tears squeezed through her lashes and

splashed on the paper place mat.

"We don't know for a fact that anything's happened to her, Michele."

Fine abandoned her cigarette in the ashtray and put her face in her

hands. Not sobbing, but still struggling to choke the emotions back.

"Maybe she left town for a few days," Liska said. "We don't know.

Do you?"