Night Game by Alison Gordon

slightly menacing, with long hair tied back in a ponytail and a Fu Manchu moustache.
    “Are you looking for someone?”
    I introduced myself and Jeff.
    “We worked with Lucy,” I explained.
    “I’m Ringo, her brother,” he said.
    Ringo?
    “I recognize your names,” he added, after we shook hands.
    “Did she mention us?” Jeff asked.
    “You’re the ones who found her.”
    “As a matter of fact, we did,” I said. “We’re very sorry for your loss.”
    The words came out easily enough. I was, after all, a minister’s daughter, and used to this kind of event.
    “The bastard who did it,” her brother said. “I’d like to get my hands on him.”
    He clenched his fists, as if to demonstrate the degree of his ferocity.
    “I wonder if you would introduce us to your mother,” I said. “We would like to express our condolences.”
    Ringo shrugged, then led us to a pale, drawn woman sitting on a couch by the (mercifully) closed coffin, nervously smoking a cigarette.
    “These here are the folks who found Lucy, Mom.”
    I ignored his tactlessness and conveyed our sympathies.
    “I’m June Hoving,” she said, then indicated a wiry older man with thinning hair and glasses, who stood beside and slightly behind her, one hand resting on the back of the couch.
    “This is my husband, Dirk. He was Lucy’s stepfather.”
    We shook hands, then June invited me to sit next to her. She was big-boned and strong-looking for all her grief, but had a tense and distracted air. Her hair was pulled back into a severe chignon, with a few wisps escaping around her forehead. She wore a plain navy-blue dress belted at her slender waist.
    “Lucy talked about you,” she said. “She told me that you were her role model.”
    Oh lord, I thought.
    “I’m honoured,” I said.
    “She always wanted to be a reporter,” she continued. “Her father was a writer, too. I guess that’s where she got it. I was glad she had ambitions.”
    She stopped, then stared bleakly ahead. Her eyes were red. She lit another cigarette.
    “I understand that you two were very close,” I said.
    “Like sisters,” she said. “Everyone said we were like sisters. We were friends, best friends.”
    “I know this isn’t a good time,” I said, “but I would like to write a story about Lucy for my paper in Toronto. Would you be willing to do an interview with me?”
    She glanced at her husband, who was talking to Jeff.
    “I guess that would be all right,” she said. “When do you want to do it?”
    “Whenever is convenient for you.”
    “The funeral is tomorrow,” she said. “I could do it the next day.”
    “That would be Thursday,” I said.
    “If you say so,” she said. “I don’t know one day from another anymore. They’re all the same. Rotten.”
    “I’ll call you Thursday morning,” I said.
    She gave me her address and phone number, which I wrote on the flap of my cigarette pack.
    “Is there anyone else you think I should talk to?” I asked. “Perhaps one of her friends?”
    “She didn’t really have many close girlfriends,” her mother said. “I think maybe they were jealous of her.”
    “Was she seeing any man regularly?”
    “Not lately. She didn’t want to get too serious about anyone. She saw what happened to me. I got married when I was eighteen, and I haven’t had much of a life. I always told her there was plenty of time for getting married and having a family.”
    She got that haunted, bleak, look again.
    “Oh, shit, here I go again,” she said, and started to cry. Her husband bent down to pat her shoulder, and glared at me. I got up.
    “We’d better go,” I said to Jeff.
    Before we had a chance, there was a small commotion at the door. Lucy’s brother was scuffling with a large, shambling man, who was as intent on coming in as Ringo was on keeping him out.
    “She was my damn daughter,” the man shouted, shaking off Ringo’s hands. He stood, a bit unsteadily, and glared around him. The room fell silent,