Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [57]
“Nascine was the officer who discovered the bodies. He may have made the mistake of touching them.”
“Nascine discovered the bodies?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course he did,” I said, disgusted.
It was amazing how little we knew about the case, and yet we had the possibility of knowing it all.
Odd wasn’t even listening. He had opened the yearbook.
I looked at the dedication page. Even upside-down I could see it was a blown-up snap of Jeannie and James, in a rain forest, covered with slickers, arms around each other, in a thick growth of ferns dripping with moisture.
“Anyhow,” said the chief. “Jeannie’s body was cremated. So was James, for that matter.”
“Shit, piss, and corruption.”
“I never met a woman like you, and I don’t think that’s a compliment.”
Odd paged through the yearbook, and I could see in his face the recognition of old friends, the reliving of school activities from someone else’s life. He stopped at one page and put his finger on a picture.
“Cammy!” he said, smiling.
I turned the book around and looked at the picture. Camilia Two Trees: Chorus, Stitch ‘n Rip Club, Library Volunteer, Cheerleaders, Homecoming Princess. She had deep dark eyes and high cheek bones, a Mona Lisa smile.
“We were friends from the first grade,” said Odd, “right up until…”
Together they must have made a formidable pair, the fair and the dark, beauties, both.
“I hope things turned out well for her,” said Odd.
“You can see for yourself,” said the chief. “She’s helping out during the season at Rocketman’s.”
Rocketman’s was at a T-intersection in the main perimeter road, set back in an acre of crushed rock where by state law purchasers of fireworks were required to set off same, and occasionally someone actually did, mostly as a test before committing to a trunkload.
The stand itself was long and narrow and consisted of a wide counter laden with pyrotech small fries, behind which was a long wall in three tiers, displaying the hard stuff, in ascending order of fire power. After hours, it was battened down by a series of hinged four-by-eight standard plywood panels, hung during the day in an open position. The whole thing was whitewashed, but stamped lumber markings bled through.
Near the entrance was an old rusted pickup for sale, with the bald spare tire mounted to the grille. The camper shell that used to be on the pickup was on the ground, at the far end of the stand. It served as kitchen and break room. A portable Honey Bucket toilet was set up at the other end of the stand.
All signage was hand-lettered, including the large Rocketman sign that sat on the roof of the stand, with its logo of an Indian atop a blasting rocket. The others: NO SMOKING, MUST BE 16 OR OLDER, NO M-80S OR LARGER WITHIN 150 FEET, VISA AND MASTERCARD OK.
Cheap plastic pennants in red, white, and blue were festooned from the stand to outlying poles in the ground. A string of Christmas lights ran the length of the stand for nighttime sales.
We pulled onto the lot, drove over the crushed rock, and up to the stand. We were the only car on the lot. Two teen-aged boys appeared from behind the counter, rising from their lawn chairs. They were bare-chested, wearing jeans that hung below their hips, revealing three inches of their boxer shorts. One was listening to rap music, the other was watching Jerry Springer on a jury-rigged battered black-and-white TV set. Goofy kids, both, but I would have killed for their hair, either one, glistening black, thick, and hanging down their backs in expertly crafted pigtails. My own had become brittle, dry, and thin. In moments of despair, I’d thought of shaving it all off and letting people think I had cancer, which, let’s face it, is a tad more socially acceptable than menopause, if less forgiving at the end.
The boy at our end of the counter, the one listening to rap, which he hadn’t bothered to turn down—Snoopy, Doopy, Dogg, Dogg, Gangsta, Bitchslap, Copkiller, Boyz, Noize—asked, “What can I get you,