“That’s when you became friends?” Louis prodded.

“Yeah, I lived a couple doors down so we walked to school together, slept over at each other’s houses. We were like sisters.”

She smiled as another memory came to her. “When we were thirteen, Kitty came up with this big plan to run away to London, because she was in love with Paul McCartney and I was in love with George. But she decided she couldn’t leave her father. We used to talk with English accents and make up false identities. Kitty wanted to be called Lady Kitrina Jaspers. I was Lady Joy Heartsfield. Joy. . Kitty came up with that for me.”

Joyce’s smile lingered; she was still lost in the past. Louis waited, not wanting to interrupt.

“What was Kitty like?” Louis asked finally.

Joyce blinked, coming back. “Like? Oh, geez, she. .” She shook her head, like she didn’t know how to answer.

“She loved to swim, especially at night,” Joyce said. “Once, when we were in eighth grade, she made me sneak out of the house and we rode our bikes over to the municipal pool. It was closed, but Kitty just climbed the fence. I was so scared we’d get caught. But Kitty wasn’t. I can still see her laughing and jumping off the high-dive board.”

Louis had a vision of the two girls giggling in the moonlit water.

“Kitty wasn’t afraid of anything,” Joyce went on. “But I was. That night at the pool, I was afraid to jump off the high board so I kind of scooted down and hung from it. I was hanging there, scared stiff and she was yelling up at me, saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, Joyce, just let go!’ ”

Joyce fell silent. The only sound was the wheeze of the air conditioner and the steady hum of the hair dryer.

“I never figured out what she saw in me,” she said. “She was so pretty and I was, well, I was kinda plain and a little chubby.” Joyce blushed slightly. “I figured I could just get her rejects.”

“Her father told me Kitty didn’t date.”

“That’s right,” Joyce said, nodding. “I haven’t seen Mr. Jagger since-” She hesitated. “I was going to say since the funeral, but he didn’t come. He spent a fortune on the coffin, mahogany with these beautiful brass handles. But then he was so upset, he couldn’t even come to see her.”

She looked at Louis. “How is he doing?”

Louis thought a moment before he answered. “Still confused.”

Joyce nodded slowly. “I should go see him. I always meant to afterward, but I got pregnant with Sean and we moved out here. Twenty years. . goes by before you know it.”

Louis thought of Mobley’s words about the greasers, the “wild crowd” girls: They got pregnant.

Joyce glanced over at the girl under the dryer. “Excuse me a moment.” She went over, checked the dryer and came back.

Louis wasn’t sure how to phrase the question that was in his head. “Ray told me boys tried to come on to Kitty all the time. You never saw her go with anyone?”

“Ray would drive her home once in a while, but she never went with anyone else.”

“Was there any boy who was more aggressive than others?”

Joyce frowned. “Well, they all flirted with her, especially the football players. They’d cruise in after a game in their cool cars, all puffed up with themselves. Lonnie Albertson, Jeff, Tony Cipolli, Lance. .”

“Lance Mobley?” Louis asked. “Did Mobley come on to her?”

“Lance came on to to anything that breathed, even me once. I think he thought we were easy, you know, because we were from Edgewood.” Joyce’s eyes grew distant. “Lance Mobley. . he was a good-looking boy. He’s sheriff now, isn’t he? I guess he did all right for himself.”

“Did any of these boys get angry when she rejected them?”

Joyce shook her head. Louis could tell she was miles-and decades-away from the dingy garage.

“Ray told me Kitty was saving herself for a rich guy,” Louis said. “So Kitty was. .” He wasn’t sure how to make this sound anything but judgmental.

Joyce looked up abruptly. “Kitty was smart, she could’ve gone to college if she had some money. But she knew that wasn’t going to happen.”

“So she wanted someone to take care of her,” Louis said.

“Don’t we all,” Joyce said softly.

She noticed Louis writing in his notebook. “Look, Kitty wasn’t a gold digger. She just wanted nice things. She wanted to go live in England someday, meet a guy with manners, like James Bond or something.”

Louis remembered the poster of Goldfinger on Kitty’s bedroom wall.

“Tell me more about Ray,” he said.

Joyce let out a sigh. “Poor Ray. He had such a crush on Kitty. It was kind of pathetic. We were mean to him. We teased him behind his back.” She hesitated. “I remember one of the other girls told us he copped a feel behind the grill. She was afraid to tell his Dad because she thought she’d get fired.”

She looked up at Louis. “Why are you asking me all these questions about Ray?”

Louis debated how much to tell her. “You said Ray had a crush on her. It might be helpful to me to know about anyone like that.”

“But why now? What’s the point? Kitty’s dead. Why are you bothering with this now?”

She was looking at him strangely, like she suddenly could read his mind, or like he was some weird voyeur, like poor old Ray Faulk.

“It might have some bearing on Jack Cade’s present case,” he said.

She stiffened at the name and something flashed over her face, like she had remembered something she had tried very hard to forget.

“I saw him once,” she said softly.

“Cade?”

Joyce nodded. Her eyes went to the girl who was sitting under the dryer, absorbed in her Cosmopolitan.

“When I was walking to school,” she said. “I was walking past this house, one of those pretty places over near the park.” She stopped, her eyes downcast. She was playing with the brush, rubbing the bristles over the palm of her hand.

“Was Kitty with you?”

Joyce nodded. “His truck was at the curb, an old beat-up red Ford with that landscaping sign on the door. He was pushing a lawn mower and he saw us walk by on the sidewalk.”

She stopped again. The air conditioner droned on.

“I looked up,” she said, “and I saw him watching us.”

She was gripping the brush, pushing the bristles into her palm. “He looked at me and. . he touched himself.”

Louis looked up from his notebook. Her head was still down, the brush gripped in her hand. When she finally raised her head, her eyes were bright, her face red.

“Did Kitty see him, too?”

Joyce shook her head. “I don’t think so. I didn’t say anything to her. It was too. .” She hesitated. “I thought about it later, after. .” Her voice trailed off again.

There had been no mention of this in Ahnert’s report of his interview with Joyce. “You didn’t tell the police,” Louis said.

She shook her head slowly. “A detective came and talked to me, but I didn’t think about it until later, when I saw Jack Cade on television after he had been arrested.”

Louis’s pen was poised over the notebook as he looked at her stricken face.

“I never told anyone. I guess I was embarrassed,” Joyce said. “I should have, but I never did.”

“Mrs. Novick?”

They both turned to look at the girl, who had ducked out from under the dryer. “I’m done, I think, Mrs. Novick.”

Joyce looked at Louis, then got up to rescue her young customer. When the girl was sitting back in the swivel chair, Joyce turned back to Louis.

“I’ve got to finish this,” she said. “I got another one coming in five minutes. Winter Fest dance tonight at the high school. Big event.” She looked wistfully at the girl in the mirror.

Louis rose, putting his notebook away. She followed him out and stood by the door.

“Thank you for your time,” Louis said.

“Are you talking to others?” she asked.

“Others?”

“From the school or the drive-in, I mean.”

“Should I?”

She was chewing on her bottom lip. “What you said about Ray, about him having a crush on Kitty. .”