Matti looked down. She hadn't her seen her friend in months. Val had gone off to college. Four years of putting off starting life.
Val never knew what she wanted. She was the type who stalled when placing a food order. Always tried to go last. Always hoped someone would suggest something. In the end, she'd end up copying what someone else had ordered.
Val never made many decisions but she was a great tag along.
Now she was deader than the overnights for Studio 60.
Lifeless in the morgue.
Some little weasel with a badge was droning.
Val had been found out at Asbury Park.
Strange in itself because Val's hair frizzed.
Girl put in hours straightening that mess.
A trip to the beach really didn't seem like the Val she knew.
Could two semesters have changed someone so fast?
Something about her being discovered the next morning and that she was strangled. That's what the cop talk was.
Unlike Val, Mattie had wanted to start life immediately.
Ink was barely dry on her high school diploma before she was off to get her investigator's license.
She had it now.
She mainly took photos of cheating husbands and the occasional cheating wife. A few missing person cases. When the bills had to be paid, she'd do a little corporate work. Run a check on a prospective employee. The suits always gave her the heebie-jeebies and she tried to avoid that even if it did pay well.
Cop badge was pumping her now. Needed information. Needed clarification. Needed more than she was going to offer.
She'd gotten the call last night from Val's mother. Val had been found, dead, two days ago. Way she saw it, three days was more than enough time for Monmouth County's not-so-finest to have picked up some clues.
Instead cop badge was badgering her for information. Too many doughnuts must have made him not just fat but lazy.
She wasn't giving up anything.
This was personal. Val had been her friend.
How'd a girl from San Jose end up New Jersey?
She wondered that as she wandered across Rutgers University. Dionne had asked for directions to San Jose, after all, not the other way around.
By the arch, in front of the steps and walkway, leading to Old Queens she queried some of Val's classmates.
She learned of a boyfriend, Bobby, who was said to be crestfallen. They filled her in on Melissa, someone that had a few run ins with Val. One of them, Kristi, had been Val's roommate, had been informed by Val's mother that Matti was coming, and offered to take her to the dorm room she and Val had shared.
Greeting card signed "XXX OOO, Bobby." God, she hated people who used symbols. A few photos taped around the mirror. She motioned to Kristi who walked over and identified the people standing around Val. Melissa was in three of the five photos.
"Thought they hated each other?" Matti pointed out.
"Not at first," Kristi said slowly. "At first, they were pretty tight. They had a falling out, over a guy I think, and then it was just . . . awkward."
"Bobby the guy?"
"No, this was before Bobby."
Matti grunted and opened the drawers. Typical bra and panties round up in the top drawer. "Kiss It" was on the back of one pair of panties. And an item she wouldn't be reporting to Val's mother. Apparently college life included some lonely nights. Moving to the next drawer, she found a set of carefully folded sweaters and sweat shirts. Third drawer was of even less interest.
Going through the closet, she searched the pockets and found a score in a long coat, a folded letter on college rule paper. From Melissa. To Val. "You stole it! Do not approach me, do not speak to me, do not cross my path! Melissa."
Kristi didn't know what the note was about but said it sounded like Melissa. She said she wished she could do more, be of more help. But she really didn't talk to Val last weekend. Val was going to a frat party on Saturday and Kristi's father was celebrating his fiftieth birthday.
"So, after I left Saturday morning, I didn't even see her. I got back Sunday evening and she wasn't here."
"Start boxing her stuff up," Matti said, "and trash the vibrator. Her mother doesn't need to know."
Kristi had told her the police had not done much but question her. They hadn't even really looked around the room. No surprise. They were treating it like a mugging gone wrong or a random attempted rape.
Thing was Val wasn't a loner. Val had never been. She didn't go anywhere unless someone else was going. She didn't do anything unless there was a lead to follow. No way she ended up at Asbury Park on her own. Either someone took her there or she was meeting someone there. Left to her own devices, Val would be seated in front of a TV any night.
A student pointed across the food court and Matti thanked him and then headed for the table.
"You Melissa?"
"And how would that be your business?" asked Melissa.
"Matti. Friend of Val's. Her mother hired me to find out what happened."
"Obviously the little tramp got what was coming to her."
She was a cold one, this Melissa. She didn't look up from the fries was she nibbling on. Not once. Matti could tell she was even more drab than in the photographs and wondered exactly how she and Val ended up friends, however briefly?
Matti sat down at the table and fired off, "You were friends once."
"Yes. Once. I was also once interested in astronomy but that too passed. I used to eat nothing but Ike & Mike but I matured out of that phase as well. All things have a conclusion."
She pushed the fries away and looked at Matti. Poker face. Or maybe one that screamed, "Who the hell do you think you are?" Matti hadn't liked her to begin with and found that initial impression only strengthening.
"You wrote Val a note. You called her a thief."
Melissa nodded and yawned.
Matti stared at her waiting for the uncomfortable shift. Melissa was trying hard to play cool customer but she couldn't pull it off. Cool customers didn't scarf down fries in the food court while wearing Einstein t-shirts.
"What?" Melissa finally asked breaking the silence. "Am I suspected of something?"
"Should you be?"
"Val was a bitch. She came on like a friend, but she was a bitch. When that was revealed, that was the end of our friendship."
Matti continued staring forcing Melissa to continue.
"It was English. I had, as always, done the work. I was prepared. We'd moved into the dorm at the same time. That's how we met. We were in the elevator together. Going up. She seemed nervous. I invited her to come over to my room later. I felt sorry for her, she was obviously an easily agitated person. Pity. Probably more pity than sorrow. I pitied her. She was like the kid who drops out of the marathon four feet after the starting line. Studying her, you could just tell she wouldn't make it. I expected she'd drop out after the spring semester. So that's how we encountered one another, I took pity on her. I studied with her as well. We had an English and a history class together. We shared notes. I should have had my suspicions raised when she ended up in bed with a man I was interested in. She immediately broke it off and begged me to forgive her."
That sounded like Val.
"Like an idiot, I did. Because I'm a better person. We tried to act as if it never happened. I tried to pretend she hadn't stabbed me in the back. Then one morning, before class begun, I shared my thoughts on Kate Chopin. We were reading the short story 'Desiree's baby.' I don't expect that you've heard of it."
Actually, Matti had but she said nothing.
"It's a story by Chopin. A short story. I had explained how, obviously, Armand is half-Black. How, obviously, that was why his father moved to Paris and why he only returned after Armand's mother died. There is no mention of the mother's race. When Desiree gives birth to Armand's child and it obviously has Black blood, that's the tip off. It was my insight. I shared it with her and her repayment was to make that argument in class when called upon. She was a thief, plain and simple."
"And after that?"
"I never spoke with her again. I composed my letter, passed it to her after class, and I never spoke to her again."
Matti believed her. Melissa was obviously the sort of person who could break off contact with anyone over any sleight, real or imagined.
"I'll tell you something else," Melissa said, leaning across the table, "I'm glad she's dead. She had it coming. Are we done?"
"Yes," Matti said rising. "But one thing. Senior year of high school, Val did her paper on Kate Chopin's short stories. Got into an intense argument with the teacher over whether or not Armand was half-Black. Val was. Her father was Black. She didn't steal your 'insight' that's been published in hundreds of studies. She lived it."
Melissa tried hard not to look taken aback but she wasn't a cool enough customer to pull that off.
Matti found Bobby out behind his frat house. He was hammering signs. She introduced herself.
"McCain," Bobby said smiling. "He's the man."
When she explained why she was there, Bobby took on a serious expression.
"Val really was special."
He talked about how Val had been interested in Chet first, that was Bobby's frat bud. She'd been hanging around with some others, hoping to catch Chet's eye.
"But she caught mine instead."
Really special, Bobby repeated. Kind of shy, kind of quiet. Not real assertive. But "a quality." Matti was finding it hard to believe, even all these miles away, Val could have taken up with a McCain supporter. Val's politics had been decidedly to the left.
"Oh, yeah," Bobby laughed. "We disagreed on that. But we kind of fell in with one another. Can't pick whom your heart wants, I guess."
"Did you and Val ever go to Asbury Park?"
"All the time," he said moving some signs. "That was kind of our place. I feel bad, now, for introducing her to it. If I'd never taken her there in the first place, she wouldn't have ever gone. Then, last weekend, she goes and ends up murdered. I blame myself."
"Had you two broken up?"
Bobby shook his head.
Before she could follow up a man fitting the description of neanderthal stepped out the back door and said, "Bobby, phone call for you."
With an "excuse me," Bobby headed into the house. Neanderthal cruised Matti's boobs with his eyes then grinned at her. Stepping around him, she went into the frat house.
Typical frat house. Beer stained sofa, a few bongs lying around. Whole place reeked of over privilege and under worked. Guy walked through in a Dave Matthews Band t-shirt.
Val's group. Matti stopped him.
Val? Yeah, he knew her. It was really sad, he said, what happened. He knew her pretty well.
"You last saw her when?"
"Saturday night. Night before, I guess, night before she died. She was here. We all got drunk and wasted. Typical Saturday night."
"Anything out of the ordinary?"
He shifted around nervously for a moment then answered in the negative.
"Typical Saturday night," he repeated.
His eyes were blood shot and his breath didn't reek of alcohol so Matti surmised he was stoned. Catching a hint, he pulled out some eye drops and applied them.
Bobby walked out a door, a bedroom door. The wall next to had a hole where a fist had obviously gone through it. Someone would have to plaster over that. Surprising no one had already.
Walking over, he scowled at Chet who shifted uncomfortably. Nodding to Matti, Chet walked off.
"Loser," Bobby hissed.
"Why don't you like him?" Matti asked.
Bobby shrugged, then put his thumb and finger up to his mouth as though holding a smoke.
"Stoner," Bobby laughed.
"Considering the fact that there's a honey bear bong as well as one made out of toilet paper on the coffee table, I wouldn't think that would be much of an issue," Matti observed.
"Oh, well, you know. Some guys can handle it. Some guys can't. He can't."
"Surprising," Matti stated. "I would have thought you and Chet would be best friends."
"We were," Bobby admitted. "Until recently."
So that was Chet. Matti said her goodbyes and walked out of the front door of the frat house. She was headed back to Val's dorm when the cop badge stopped her.
"What's with all the questions? We got a call from the Dean of Admissions that you're asking professors and teachers all these questions?"
"Someone has to."
"Look, miss, we're questioning all the hobos and vagrants on the boardwalk. We'll find out which one of them killed your friend. This ain't TV and you need to leave the cop work to the professionals."
Matti almost managed not to laugh in his face.
"You know Bobby?"
"Yeah, the victim's boyfriend," the badge said.
"My friend, my dead friend's boyfriend," Matti corrected. "You need to take him in for questioning and book him."
"Him? Bobby's a good kid. He's a Young Republican."
"Mister Straight and Narrow killed Val."
"How do you figure?"
Matti sketched it out for him. How Val and Melissa had both been interested in the same guy, Chet. How they'd hung around the frat house trying to catch his attention. How Val had. How Val and Chet had slept together. That's why Chet was so stoned now. His way of "coping." While Bobby built signs and worked on a campaign, mouthing all the correct words of sorrow and mourning but acting as though nothing had happened.
"Well maybe out in La-La Land, that's how you convict, but in the real world, everyone's not a suspect," the badge laughed.
"La-La Land would be Los Angeles," Matti corrected. "Val would never go anywhere by herself. She doesn't even have a car. Did she hitch to Asbury Park? Take the bus? No, she was driven there and she was driven there because it was an out of the way spot. It was also the special place for her and Bobby which adds to the suspicion. Who else but Bobby would have taken her there?"
"And why would Bobby have killed her, Sherlock Holmes?"
"He's crazy. He's for Senator Crazy. Besides, Saturday night, at the party, he must have found out that his special one, his picture-ready, possible some day wife, had slept with Chet. He's too busy living in a pretend world to handle reality and he couldn't handle the reality. It ruined his fairy tale fantasy. That's probably when he punched a hole in the wall outside his bedroom. It's probably when he turned on Chet and it probably scared Val so much she split. Then he shows up Sunday, talking he's sorry. Saying they can put it behind them. Asking her to run over to Asbury Park with him. Where they'll put it all behind them. Where they'll start over fresh."
"Well you just have it all figured out."
"Yeah, I do because you made two mistakes I didn't. One, you believed that Val would ever go anywhere by herself. Two, you bought the lie that there's any such thing as a young Republican."
The announcement said to buckle your seats. Which Matti did. Like Val's body, she was headed home. She looked again at the front page of the paper. A photo of Bobby and Bobby Senior on the front page. They denied his guilt. They were going to fight this. The story told of how Chet let it slip at a frat party that he'd slept with Val, how Bobby had screamed and yelled, punched a wall, but, both Bobbys insisted, so what? A student had come forward to say he'd seen Val get into Bobby's car Sunday afternoon. Hadn't thought much of it because they were a known couple. Just assumed, before the other stuff came out, that Bobby and Val had been off to do something and, much later, Val must have ended up at Asbury Park. Turned out Bobby had also had other incidents with women in his past. They'd been covered up. Money tended to make that possible. Hopefully, this last incident was too public.
The plane took off.