Chapter Fifteen #2
Justice for Diane, the posters read, and Margot feels a stab of hatred for the newspaper editors, the news network producers, who have no doubt heard about Diane’s murder but didn’t deem it consumable for their audiences.
Murder stories—or, rather, what makes a good murder story—so often hinge on the social standing of the victims. Like with the “Career Girls Murders,” the name slapped by the media on the murders of Emily Hoffert and Janice Wylie in Manhattan a couple of years ago.
Janice, who worked as a researcher for Newsweek, was the daughter of an influential advertising exec.
Schoolteacher Emily was the daughter of a high-powered surgeon.
Their faces were splashed across the newspapers, highlighted on the evening news.
White Working Women were under threat! The stories ran for weeks.
This crime against Diane was just as brutal, the details just as appalling, yet one dominated the headlines while the other is being swept under the carpet.
Margot pushes on the door and a crude bell signals her entrance.
In a corner, an elderly woman reclines, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose.
The rest of the shop, Margot can see, is full to the roof with pots, pans, kitchen gadgets, all cracked and crumbling facets of life polished up and put on sale.
The posters in the window are snatching all the light, so the space is gloomy, sprinkled with spiraling motes of dust.
“Lost?” the woman levels from the corner.
Margot resists the urge to smooth down her skirt, to plaster a smile across her face.
“You must be Mrs. Howard Murray.”
The woman rocks in the chair, then sighs. “I am she.”
“I’m Margot Green. I wanted to ask you about Diane.”
The woman’s eyes snap up. Margot can see, then, the jarring resemblance—the high cheekbones, the hazel eyes, a beauty passed down by blood. She imagines Pearl decades earlier, the same age as Diane, in front of a mirror, fixing her hair, fastening a necklace around her throat.
“Diane never did nothing wrong.”
Margot shakes her head quickly. “No.” She steps forward. “I’m trying to find out who might be responsible for what happened to her.”
“Who are you to care?” Pearl eyes Margot’s dress, her shoes, her jewelry. “Newspapers don’t care. Damn police don’t care.” She rocks back and forth in the chair.
“I grew up here,” Margot says. “I know what it’s like to come from a place like Golden Point.”
The woman watches her, shoulders rounding guardedly.
Margot continues, determined. “I want people to know about Diane. I think it’s possible she was killed by someone who has killed two other women already.”
“What?”
“Both young, like Diane. Beautiful.”
“You know who did this?” Pearl hauls herself from the seat, fists clenched beside her, and Margot can see the delicate bones showing through the skin.
“We don’t know who yet.”
The woman tuts, starts to turn away.
“But we’re trying to find a link between the girls. Maybe it was someone they all knew. Maybe there’s something connecting them that we’re not yet seeing.”
“So you’re a cop.” She nods, disgusted. “We already told you everything, and you did nothing.”
“I’m not a cop,” Margot assures her. “I’m someone who’s had her life ruined by someone dangerous, too. I want you to know that people are interested in your granddaughter, in what happened. They do care.”
The woman is silent, watching her as if weighing up whether Margot can be trusted.
“Diane was trying to make it as a model, right? Was she having any luck?”
The woman purses her lips, then reluctantly crosses the floor toward a desk pushed up against the wall.
“She was doing okay with it,” Pearl says as she strains to reach for something on the desktop.
“She’d had meetings with a couple agencies, was doing cleaning work to make money, get straight again.
Here.” She thrusts a pile of photographs toward Margot.
Margot takes them and flicks through a series of headshots of Diane, a face that commands attention, one that seems as if it belongs to someone whose name you would one day know.
There are some candid photographs, too: Diane in the sunshine, tongue bared as she’s about to lick a Popsicle; Diane in her cleaning company’s apron, a bold logo on her chest.
“I tried to show these to the police.” Pearl’s rheumy eyes meet Margot’s.
“I wanted them to know she was a person, with a family and a life. All the press printed was a paragraph, made it sound like she’d accidentally stepped into the wrong alleyway and got herself killed.
” Her eyes close. “It wasn’t like that.” Pearl’s voice grows more urgent.
“He’d thought about it, that bastard—whoever it was that took her.
” Her tone tightens. “There were things he did to her; they had to be planned. But the papers didn’t even talk about ’em. ”
This she hadn’t expected. “Are you able to tell me about those things?” Margot feels her palms growing clammy. She thinks of Cheryl Herrera and the arrow, Emily Roswell’s tattooed knuckles.
Pearl eyes Margot cagily, then spits out, “He choked her.”
Margot can feel the vitriol, the scorch of anger, in the words. Another strangling.
“He dressed her. He…put a coat on her, some designer thing.”
A coat. He dressed her. Just like he dressed Cheryl Herrera in the wig.
“He put suspenders on her. Left her body to be seen like that. Put it on show for everyone, like she was some shop mannequin.” Pearl’s hand goes to her mouth.
Margot’s mind is reeling, searching for traction.
She knows she should comfort the old woman, but she’s trying to order her own thoughts.
Diane was strangled, the body dressed and posed.
That’s more than enough to suggest that this is the work of the same killer. What else can the cops be looking for?
Pearl stands there, her body fragile, her face wracked with grief, with rage. Then Margot remembers something—something Barbie Cook mentioned at the party.
“She’d been writing letters, I heard—to a movie director, Mason Clarke.”
“To who?”
“Can I borrow these pictures?” Margot asks. “I’ll return them; I’ll bring them right back here to you. I promise you that.”
Pearl hesitates.
“I need to show someone Diane’s picture,” she coaxes.
“I need to ask them some questions—if you’ll allow it.
I think it could help us find her killer.
” She searches Pearl’s face, the hollow cheeks, the soft, crepey skin of her neck.
“I know what it’s like when no one will believe that what you say is true,” Margot says softly.
“I know what it’s like to feel discarded. Please. Trust me.”
The woman closes her eyes for a moment, and then opens them. When they meet Margot’s, she sees something in them she recognizes—a steeliness, a warning. You’d better find out who did this, they say.
Pearl hands over the photos.