Don't Cry Now by Joy Fielding Page B

across the pillows; a white phone, its cord hopelessly twisted and looped around an open address book, sat in the middle of the bed beside a half-eaten hamburger, relish and mustard still clinging to its paper wrapper. More empty bottles protruded from just underneath the bed. Wine bottles, Bonnie recognized, trying not to stare.
    â€œIt’s so neat downstairs,” Bonnie muttered, trying to reconcile the two areas.
    â€œNo one ever uses the downstairs,” Sam said.
    â€œWhat about dinner?” Bonnie tried not to focus on the half-eaten hamburger. “Who made dinner? Where did you eat?”
    â€œWe ate out,” Sam said. “Or we ordered in, ate in our rooms.” He said this as if it were the most normal thing in the world for families to behave this way.
    â€œThe real estate business isn’t exactly nine to five,” Lauren continued. “It’s hard to coordinate everybody’s schedules. My mother did the best she could.”
    â€œOf course she did,” Bonnie agreed.
    â€œA little mess isn’t the end of the world.”
    â€œNo, of course it’s not.”
    â€œWho asked you?” the girl said.
    Bonnie was aware of Captain Mahoney standing by thebed, watching this exchange, his large hands diligently working to extricate the address book from the phone wire. She felt faint, the odor of discarded food and stale cigarettes swirling around her head, like a dense fog, summoning forth reminders of earlier odors, even more unpleasant. The smell of blood and torn flesh and human wastes. The smell of violent, unexpected death.
    Bonnie felt Rod’s arms wrap protectively around her, as if he knew what she was thinking, and felt her own body sway, then sink, against his side.
    Captain Mahoney lifted the open address book from the bed, the phone wire snapping back against the sheet like an elastic band. “Anybody know Sally Gardiner, Lyle and Caroline Gossett, Linda Giradelli?” he read, the address book obviously open to the letter G.
    â€œWe used to be friends with the Gossetts,” Rod remarked. “They live across the street.”
    â€œMy mother had a lot of friends,” Lauren said.
    â€œDrinking buddies,” Rod whispered under his breath.
    â€œWhat about a Dr. Walter Greenspoon?”
    â€œThe psychiatrist?” Bonnie asked.
    â€œYou know him?”
    â€œI know of him. He writes a weekly column for the Globe .”
    â€œAnd we’ve used him as a consultant on our show a number of times,” Rod added.
    â€œAny chance your ex-wife might have been a patient of his?”
    â€œI have no idea.”
    Captain Mahoney looked toward Sam and Lauren. Both shrugged. The police captain flipped to another page. “How about Donna Fisher or Wendy Findlayson?”
    Rod and Bonnie shook their heads. Again Sam and Lauren shrugged.
    â€œJosh Freeman?”
    â€œThere’s a Josh Freeman who teaches at Weston Secondary,” Bonnie said, startled by the familiar name.
    â€œHe’s my art teacher,” Sam concurred.
    â€œIs that the school’s phone number?” Captain Mahoney stretched the book toward Bonnie.
    â€œNo,” she said, picturing the tall, slightly rumpled-looking widower who was new to the school this year, wondering what Joan would have been doing with his home number.
    Captain Mahoney handed the red leather address book to Detective Kritzic, then returned his attention to the bed, pushing the phone and the partly eaten hamburger aside, and pulling back the sheet. “What have we here?” he asked, although the question was obviously rhetorical.
    Bonnie watched him lift a large paper scrapbook into his arms and open it, quickly flipping through the pages. “Anybody know a Scott Dunphy?” he asked after a moment’s pause.
    Bonnie felt an uncomfortable twinge of recognition, although she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t know anyone named Scott Dunphy.
    â€œWhat about