“Your husband is running for Mayor, Marisol!”
“And if he doesn’t get elected, it will be good news for everyone,” Marisol said with a laugh. She picked up her wine glass to sip again, realized it was empty, and set it back down.
Gretchen said, “We’ve already heard from some other sources that Vera supplied painkillers to many of her clients. We’re not here to arrest anyone or get anyone into trouble. We’re just trying to find out as much about Vera as we can. We’ve been unable to locate anyone who knew her well at the time that her daughter was killed.”
Marisol said, “Yeah, well, after she had her daughter, we all grew apart. Stopped hanging out. Didn’t really keep in touch. Connie left first, didn’t you, Con?”
Connie nodded. Her eyes were on the table. “I had to. My daughter—” She broke off, eyes now on Josie and Gretchen, pleading. “I started it, okay? I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t like we were all hanging out trying to score drugs. With my first daughter, they messed up the epidural. The labor was excruciating, and I had pain in my back and down my leg for months afterward. The doctors didn’t believe me. Vera said she knew someone she could get oxycodone from.”
“Someone like who?” Josie asked.
Connie squeezed her dog close. “I don’t know. Like an ex or a friend or something. Anyway, she got them for me, and they helped. I was so grateful to her. She even came over a few times when my husband was out of town and helped me with my daughter. She always wanted a baby, you know. She was hoping to meet someone, get married, and then have a baby, but it just didn’t work out that way.”
Josie said, “So you two became close, then.”
Connie nodded. “I already knew Marisol and Tara. They both live nearby. A few times I had them over, and Vera was already here. Eventually, we just became this little group. We’d get together—sometimes at my house, sometimes here or at Tara’s—and hang out.”
Marisol took her wine glass and walked back to the fridge to refill it. “We hung out and we drank,” she clarified. “And eventually, Vera was getting the rest of us pills, and sometimes pot, and sometimes—”
Connie lowered her gaze. “Stop, Mar.”
“Why? Does it matter now?”
When Connie didn’t answer, Marisol said, “Cocaine. That was Whitney’s thing. But she had a heart condition. Those two didn’t go together. She was coked up for years before her heart gave out.”
Josie said, “We’re aware that Whitney is deceased. It was Vera supplying her with the cocaine the entire time?”
Marisol said, “Not the entire time. Just at first.”
Gretchen looked at her notes. “Whitney died in 1998.” For Josie’s benefit, she said, “Beverly would have been ten.”
“Right,” Josie said. “Vera continued to sell painkillers and other drugs after her daughter was born?”
Connie said, “I’m not entirely sure.”
“Why is that?” Gretchen asked.
Connie cleared her throat. “I, uh, I had an incident. It was before Vera got pregnant. I got so high on painkillers that I fell asleep. I was home alone with my oldest daughter. She was very young. I passed out for hours. Twelve, to be exact. My husband came home, found me unconscious on the couch and our daughter upstairs in her crib, wet and covered in filth, starving and crying.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Oh God, it was horrible. That was the end. The end of all of it. The drinking, the pills. I was so ashamed.”
For this she got another eye-roll from Marisol. “Oh please. You make it sound so dramatic. Your daughter was fine!”
Connie’s eyes flashed as she glowered at Marisol. “You don’t know what it’s like. You never had kids. You don’t understand how it feels to know your baby was suffering for all those hours, crying for you, and you didn’t feed or change or comfort her because you were wasted.”
Marisol snapped, “I went to rehab, too, Con.”
Gretchen held up a hand. “Ladies, please. Slow down. Connie, after the incident with your daughter, what happened?”
Connie shifted the dog in her lap, shooting Marisol one last dirty look before answering. “I went into a thirty-day inpatient rehab program. My mother came and cared for my daughter. My husband didn’t travel during that time or for the month after that. I haven’t touched anything since.”
Josie said, “You stopped going to parties with Vera and the girls as well?”
“I had to. The point of those parties was to drink and get high. Plus, I had a baby at home depending on me and a husband who supported me through rehab. I couldn’t let them down.”
“But you still maintained contact with Vera?” Gretchen asked.
“Well, Vera was the best stylist I ever had,” Connie explained. “She was a friend, I guess. I just didn’t see her outside of the salon anymore.”
“You were at her baby shower,” Josie said.
“Well, yeah. Like we said, Vera always wanted a baby. I was happy for her. It wasn’t planned, and it didn’t take the form she always wanted: marriage and then a baby, but she was thrilled. I did visit her a few times when Beverly was an infant. She was exhausted, as all new mothers are, and a little overwhelmed.”
Josie said, “We understand that Vera went onto bedrest early. Did either of you see her while she was on bedrest?”
“No,” Connie said. “She went to stay with her brother.”
Josie suspected this was a lie. A lie Vera had told to people who were supposed to be close friends. She would know for sure once she heard back from the police in Georgia with respect to their investigation into Floyd Urban.
Connie went on, “I saw her a few times after she came home with Beverly but after that, we drifted apart. Marisol stayed in touch with her, though.”
Marisol said, “You’re wrong. You stayed in touch with her longer than I did.”
Gretchen said, “I didn’t see you in the photos from Vera’s baby shower, Marisol.”
“I was in rehab then.” She laughed humorlessly. “We were all in rehab at one point or another. Except Tara, I suppose.”
“And Whitney,” Connie added.
Marisol put her wine glass down and folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t have a big dramatic story to tell. I just realized that I was taking so many pills that I was sleeping more hours a day than I was awake. I put on a ton of weight. I wasn’t myself. When my husband came home from traveling, it was a struggle to stay awake to spend any time with him. He was worried. He said he didn’t even recognize me. I think he was more worried that I was depressed than anything else. He didn’t even know about the pills. I had to come clean. I told him about everything—how I was bored while he was away, and I’d been getting together with the girls for drinks, which turned into us trying some pills and then me taking them on my own when I wasn’t with the girls. The whole spiral. We talked about it and decided I would go into rehab.”
Connie blurted, “Is that what you call it? That was a lot of rehab for someone who’s on her second glass of wine in the middle of the day.”
Marisol waved a dismissive hand at Connie and sipped her wine again. To Josie and Gretchen she said, “She’s just jealous that I got to really go away for rehab. I didn’t have kids so I went to a swanky place in Colorado.”