Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [63]
“You were saying that there was something about Jocelyn Wallis that bothered you.”
“No, I don’t think so.” The microwave dinged, and Lois was on it like a flea on a dog, quickly sliding the glass measuring pitcher out of the microwave. Deftly, as if she’d done it a million times, she began pouring steaming water from the pitcher into twin porcelain cups that bore the stains of countless uses. She plopped a used tea bag into her cup, then asked, “Orange pekoe or English breakfast?”
“Pekoe,” Alvarez said, just to keep the conversation flowing. She was standing in the dining area, the kitchen counter separating them, and watched as Lois found some loose tea and dropped a spoonful into the second cup.
Once the tea was steeping, Lois slid that cup across the Formica.
Alvarez reminded, “You said, ‘She was a nice enough girl, or woman, really, just a little . . . ,’ and then you didn’t finish. What were you going to say?”
“Oh. Well.” As if she were suddenly lost in thought, Lois dunked her tea bag several times, then let it steep. “Jocelyn was complicated, not that I knew her all that well.” She pinched the last drops of tea out of the tiny wet bag, then tossed it into the trash. Immediately Kaiser stuck his long nose into the open container. “Out of there, mister! You know better!”
Tail between his legs, the doxie scurried out of the kitchen. A step behind him, Lois walked into the dining area and waved Alvarez into one of the antique chairs.
“What do you mean, ‘complicated’?”
“Maybe that’s the wrong word.” Blowing across her cup, Lois settled onto a well-worn cushion in one of the chairs. She rested her elbows on the table. “Jocelyn was young and . . . not really wild, more like enthusiastic and so anxious to fall in love. She’d already been married, y’know. Not once, but twice, and what was she? Thirty-four?” Disapproval etched the lines near the corners of Lois’s mouth.
“Thirty-five,” Alvarez said. “It’s not uncommon these days to be married several times by that age.”
“Oh, I know. I know, and I’m not judging her.” Shaking her head emphatically, she added, “But it seemed to me that she was looking for a man. Really looking hard. Had dated online, I think, and then there was the father of one of her students, and she just was getting a little desperate.” She tasted her tea. “Again, in my opinion.”
“A lot of men visit her?”
Lois was sipping, but she lifted her free hand and waggled it, as if she didn’t really know the answer. Maybe yes. Maybe no.
“There were some that I saw around here. But I’m not a snoop, so I wouldn’t really know. There was the rancher who was a father to one of her students. I think I mentioned him. Trask or Trevor or . . . Tall. Good-looking.”
“Trace O’Halleran.”
“That’s the one. But that relationship was a while ago.” She pursed her lips as she remembered. “I think she was very disappointed about that one. Her biological clock was really ticking.”
“Had she been dating anyone recently?”
“No one I could name. But there were a couple, I think. One man, tall and looked kind of like a bodybuilder, carried himself that way, you know, erect, stiff-shouldered. Drove a dark truck, I think. I only remember because Kaiser, the little stinker, lifted his leg on the truck’s front tire. A Michelin. I remember.”
“Local plates?”
“Oh . . . I have no idea.” She was shaking her head. “The second Kaiser did his thing, I hurried into the house.”
“Do you remember what kind of truck?” Alvarez asked. This was probably nothing, but they didn’t have a lot to go on.
“No . . . but it was large, not one of those smaller ones.”
“Domestic?”
She shrugged. “All I remember is that it was dark. Black or blue or gray and was fairly new,