The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [124]
“You didn’t have to call your lawyer, Mom,” Canada said.
“Believe it or not, I’m worried about you,” Elizabeth said.
A pile of dirty clothes in a Treasure Island grocery bag stood by the door. Canada looked scrubbed but uncombed, unmade, and so he assumed she must have showered here and pulled something clean from her childhood closet—a rock tour shirt and torn jeans with ballpoint tattoos above the knees, relics from long, torturous days at school. They still fit, but they looked to be from another time, like a costume at a theme party.
Reggie said, “Let’s get to the reason I’m here, all right? The immediate concern is for Canada’s safety. I’ve been in touch with the Las Vegas police and confirmed that I am representing Canada. They will want to talk to her, but that won’t happen today. I’m not even sure what the logistics of that would be, whether it will take place here in Chicago or back—” Reggie stopped in mid-sentence because he could tell she wasn’t listening. Canada had a distant look on her face, like someone rewinding through a video, looking for a particular scene.
Not until just then did Reggie realize that Canada hadn’t read a newspaper in a week. He understood now why Elizabeth Gold had called him here in the first place. He turned to the mother. “Does she know?” he asked.
Elizabeth shook her head. Canada jerked her chin up, eyes alert now, lips tightening into a frown.
“Canada, have you been in touch with anyone from home?” Reggie asked.
Elizabeth said, “I hadn’t heard from her in five years.”
Reggie said, “From Las Vegas, I mean. That home.”
Canada said no. “I was taking a break from that place.”
“That’s your problem,” Elizabeth said. “You’re always running away.”
Reggie quieted her with a glare. “Canada, we’ve been looking for you. A lot of people have been looking for you.”
“What do you mean?”
Reggie’s father had always told him that if you do something you enjoy, you’ll be successful. The truth is, if you become good at something no one enjoys—like delivering the worst kind of news—you’ll become rich.
He said, “Beatrice Beaujon and David Amoyo are dead.”
The look of comprehension came quickly. Her face melted into a horrible mask, mouth open in a trembling kidney shape, eyes flooded, nose wrinkled to a pug. Her mother reached out, but Nada pulled away.
Reggie hoped his intense discomfort couldn’t have been read from the expression on his face. His had been the invisible hand that shaped the lives of these women, and although he had not brought them directly to this moment of grief, he had taken so many choices away from them, had driven them to estrangement and then back again, the daughter suddenly fearing for her life, the mother wanting to protect her but not at all sure how to do it.
Which was exactly why she had called him when Nada suddenly appeared—To break the bad news.
“How?” Canada asked.
Reggie paused to let her worst thoughts be confirmed. “Murdered. In their homes. Ms. Beaujon’s husband was killed, as well.”
A whimper and then a whisper. “Lori?”
“Who’s Lori?”
She could barely form the words. “Bea’s daughter.”
Reggie nodded. “She wasn’t home.”
Canada took a long breath, assessing where the holes in her life would be now and mentally filling them. “Who?”
Reggie’s tongue found the tops of his teeth, upper and lower. “Maybe you want to take a break before we go on with this.”
Canada’s head shook in a wide path, shoulder to shoulder. “Who killed them?”
Reggie reached into his briefcase and removed a creased and coffee-stained Sun-Times. “Police are looking at a casino employee named Wayne Kenneth Jennings.”
Nada scanned the story and touched the photo with her finger and then sat upright. Something almost like a smile formed on her lips, as if this were the lie that exposed the mistake, as if she now knew everything they were telling her was untrue. “There’s no way.”
“Apparently, he’s the main suspect at the moment, although the police never call them that anymore. They aren’t ruling out potential involvement by others.