Bubba's Ghost

by Marja McGraw

  After we hung up I stuck my head out the back door and called Bubba. Apparently no longer upset with me, he came strolling into the house.

  “Come on, let’s go see Dolly.” He wagged that big tail of his. “Maybe you can stay with her while I drive out to Covina.”

  Good grief! I realized how much I’d been talking to the dog, and it surprised me. Of course, I’d been spending more time with him than I had with people lately. Guess I needed to verbalize my thoughts, and he was a pretty good listener, whether he meant to be or not.

  We walked next door to Dolly’s house where we found the little family sitting outside. Dolly and Chrissy were gently swaying, sitting on a porch swing. Tammi had plopped herself on the bottom step with a coloring book. Bubba went straight to Tammi, where he stopped and sniffed her crayons.

  “It’s so nice to sit out here.” Chrissy was enjoying the warm morning. “Tammi and I have been staying inside too much lately because of the bum. I feel like we’ve been set free.”

  “I can understand that.” She’d probably felt like a prisoner in her own home. “At least it’s warmer this morning than it has been, so you can sit out here and actually enjoy yourself.”

  “I think spring is around the corner,” Dolly said. “I can feel a difference in the air. Can’t you feel it, Sandi?”

  “I hadn’t noticed, but I guess you’re right. At least, there’s something in the air.”

  I turned to Chrissy. “I hate to bring this up, but would you please tell me exactly what happened last night? There was so much going on, and Detective Chase didn’t want to share a lot of information with me.”

  Chrissy glanced at Tammi, as if to assure herself that her daughter was occupied and okay. Seeing that Tammi and Bubba had moved to the lawn, the mother smiled.

  “I don’t want Tammi to hear me talking about last night. I want her to forget about it. She doesn’t know much of what happened and I want to keep it that way.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  “Tammi and I stopped at the store and ran a few other errands after work, and we didn’t arrive home until after six-thirty. We’d eaten dinner out, so I wouldn’t have felt rushed, except I wanted to get inside because of the bum coming around. It was dark by then.

  “I pulled into the driveway and checked to see if the light in the basement was on again. Since that night we found out he’d been down there, I always check to see if the light is on. It’s a pretty scary feeling, knowing that someone has been in your house, even if it is just the basement. He couldn’t have gotten into the house that way though. Not with the washer on top of the trap door.”

  “I’m surprised you even stayed there after that night,” Dolly said.

  “It’s my home, Grandma, although now I don’t think we’ll stay there. I don’t want to be in a house where someone’s been murdered, and I certainly don’t want Tammi there.” She was quiet for a minute. “Actually, beginning with my husband’s death and working through this ordeal, that house holds nothing but bad memories now. It felt like the house held good memories of my husband, but now I realize I was wrong. I was trying to hang onto him by staying there because it’s where we spent our last time together. Now I don’t want to see it again, except to pick up my things and move out.”

  “I don’t blame you for wanting out of that place.” I’d be pretty freaked out if someone were sneaking in and out of my basement. I gulped. Someone had been in my attic – more than once. I shoved that thought as far out of my head as I could and asked Chrissy to continue.

  “Okay, so I didn’t see the light, and I took some shopping bags into the house. I stopped on my way home and bought Tammi some play clothes. Anyway, I started a load of laundry while Tammi went into her room and played one of her stories.”

  “One of her stories? What do you mean?” If I were a mother, I’d have known what she was talking about, but I wasn’t.

  “Tammi has some audio tapes with kids’ stories on them.”

  “Ah.”

  “Anyway, I put the groceries away and I was about to sit down and catch my breath when I realized I was missing a bag. I went back to the car to get the bag, and that’s when I noticed the light was on again. I tried to stay calm because of Tammi, but I don’t think I did a good job. I hurried into the house and grabbed Tammi, and we ran over to Doug and Becky’s house. I called the police from there.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “We stayed there until Officer Paley showed up. Becky was taking a nap, and I told Doug not to get her up. She hasn’t been feeling well lately, and the last thing she needed was to be upset. Doug said I could leave Tammi with him while I met the officer at my house. He said Becky would be up soon and she’d watch Tammi for me.”

  “Okay, so there was no light when you got home, but a few minutes later there was?”

  “That’s right. Well, no, not exactly. I mean, I did take time to start the laundry, and I’d unpacked the groceries.” Chrissy looked thoughtful, apparently trying to remember the sequence of events.

  “Let’s see. I’d gone to my room and changed clothes, too. And Tammi and I talked about what she’d done at school that day. I guess it was about half an hour from the time we got home until I remembered the bag in the car. And between the washer and Tammi’s tape, I couldn’t have heard anything coming from down in the basement.”

  “What happened after Paley arrived?”

  “The washer was heavy because there was so much water in it, so he went outside to look through the basement window while I started the washer draining.

  “Oh, Sandi, I was so scared. I was afraid the bum would come to the door while I was on the back porch. But then Officer Paley came back into the house. He looked really weird, and he ripped the cord to the washer out of the wall and began moving it. The hoses were still attached to the wall so I loosened those while he kept pulling on the washer. It was like he was, well, frantic. He was grunting and pulling on that machine like he was angry, too. Angry and frantic, yeah, that what it seemed like.”

  I was able to fill things in for myself. “He’d seen his stepbrother by then, and he was probably hoping it wasn’t too late to help him. Yeah, he would have been frantic to move the washer and get to him.”

  Dolly hadn’t said a word while Chrissy told her story. “Oh, what a tangled web…” She tsk tsked. Her partial quote and tsking didn’t seem quite appropriate, but I knew she meant well.

  “It was too late.” Chrissy sat up straighter and I could see the tension in her posture. “I started helping him, and after we moved the washer and got the trap door open, Officer Paley got to Frendd as fast as he could. I saw him checking for a pulse. He gave up and turned his head away from me, and stayed like that for a minute.

  “I called out to him, and it seemed to bring him back from wherever he’d gone. He climbed slowly up the stairs, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Then he called for help.

  “All these police cars came flying up to my house with their lights and sirens blaring, and pretty soon there were policemen everywhere. They were asking so many questions that it confused me. One of them said I looked like I was in shock and to get me something to drink. I think it might have been that Chase guy. I had a few old tranquilizers left from when I lost my husband, and I took one of those. Didn’t help much. Anyway, it wasn’t long after that when you called.”

  My cell phone rang and I excused myself to answer it, hoping it was either Pete or Paley. As much as I wanted to hear from Pete, I hoped it was Paley.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “Ms. Webster, this is Todd Paley. I understand you want to talk to me.” His voice sounded tired, his tone one of defeat. I actually felt sorry for the man, but the feeling didn’t last. I couldn’t forget that he’d left Chrissy and Tammi blowing in the wind when they needed him.

  “Yes, I would like to talk to you. Would it be convenient for me to come out to see you?”

  “No, but come anyway. I guess I owe you an explanat
ion. Who knows? Maybe you can help clear this mess up. Johnson seems to think you’re a bright woman. And God knows, you’ve got the bulldog attitude to push things along. Right now I seem to be the number one suspect, and no one has much sympathy.”

  Chrissy looked at me with a question in her eyes. I mouthed Todd Paley to her. Her mouth formed an Oh, and her eyes opened wider.

  “Okay, Officer Paley, what’s your address? I’ll be out there as soon as I can.”

  He gave me his address and directions to his place, and we hung up.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” I glanced at Chrissy and Dolly. “He’s going to talk to me. A few good answers can go a long way to clearing up the confusion.”

  “Go get him!” Dolly was shaking her fist at nothing in particular.

  “Dolly, all he’s going to do is wipe some of the steam off the mirror.”

  “Huh?”

  “He’s going to answer questions and make some sense out of this mess, finally.” I wrapped my hand around Dolly’s little fist. “You keep babying your girls while I’m gone. Oh, and can I leave Bubba here, too? Maybe he can keep Tammi company.”

  “I’ve got one of Tammi’s toy balls in the house. Does he play fetch?” Chrissy was on her feet and heading through the front door.

  “How does Tammi feel about Keep Away?”

  Chrissy raised her eyebrow questioningly. I smiled at her, knowing that Bubba did know that game.

  Retrieving my backpack from the house, I left for Covina, deciding to stop at the police department first to talk to Lieutenant Johnson. I wanted to thank him for talking Paley into seeing me.

  Arriving at the station, I found Lieutenant Johnson at the front desk talking to a different woman than I’d spoken to on previous trips. I noticed she wasn’t rushing to answer the phones while he stood next to her. She had her happy face on, apparently liking Johnson’s closeness.

  “Hi, Lieutenant. I thought I’d take a chance on catching you here.”

  “Ms. Webster. What can I do for you?”

  The woman’s smile disappeared when he spoke to me, and she answered the phone with a last glance at the man by her side.

  “I wanted to say thank you. I don’t know what you said to Officer Paley, but he’s agreed to talk to me. And it sounded like it was because of something you said. So, thank you.”

  He grinned. “I told him I had a feeling that you might take more of a personal interest in his story, and that maybe, just maybe, you could help him out. And I reminded him of how persistent you can be.”

  “He called it my bulldog attitude. It does come in handy sometimes. It’s something I learned at the knee of my mother. Now, she’s a real bulldog.” I grinned at Lieutenant Johnson and imagined my face looking similar to Bubba’s. Not a pretty picture.

  Lieutenant Johnson laughed. He seemed awfully jovial for a man on his morning off with an officer under his command in trouble. I understood when the female officer at the desk looked up at him through thick black eyelashes.

  “I gotta go, Lieutenant, but thanks again.” I felt as though I was intruding. Besides, I wanted to hurry over to Todd Paley’s home.

  “Let me know how things are going, will you?” He was obviously concerned about Paley. Maybe the officer really was a good guy who’d gotten in over his head. I’d try to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “I’ll call you if I come up with anything. Or should I call Detective Chase?”

  “Both, please.”

  I waved goodbye and left, heading for Paley’s house. He’d given me good directions, so I didn’t have any trouble finding the place. He lived in a townhouse on Puente Street, on the other side of town from where Chrissy lived.

  Finding the right number, I pulled into the short driveway leading to his garage and parked.

  He answered the door quickly and invited me inside, making me think he’d been watching for me. I glanced around, noticing that he had good taste. His home was comfortable, with nice furniture, very masculine. He noticed as I took it all in.

  “I’m not married and decided I didn’t want all the frills a woman would add to the place.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say, so I nodded.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked.

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “Then have a seat and let’s get this over with.” He sat down and indicated I should do the same. “What do you want to know?”

  “I have a lot of questions, but let’s start at the beginning. I think there are a lot of blank spaces you can fill in for me.”

  “Ask away. If you can help find John’s killer and clear my name, then I’ll answer anything you want to know. Anything I’m allowed to answer, that is. You realize that I may not be able to answer all of your questions, right? Don’t forget there’s an Internal Affairs investigation going on.”

  “Officer Paley, John Frendd was your stepbrother, is that correct?”

  “Yes. I was about ten years old when my mother married his father. Biggest mistake Mom ever made. She managed to take my brother and me for a ride through hell, not to mention what she got herself into.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Paley took a deep breath before continuing with his story. “Mike Frendd seemed like a good guy when my mother met him. He was on his best behavior and treated us with respect. He’d only been divorced for about six months, and he told her what an unhappy marriage he’d been in. After about another six months, my mother and Mike were married.

  “The trouble began about six months later.” He glanced out the window, appearing to be deep in thought. “I never thought about it before, but each change was about six months apart. Kinda strange, but I guess it doesn’t mean anything.”

  Paley clenched his jaws before he continued. I could see the muscles working overtime. “That’s when Mike began coming home drunk and slapping Mom around -- took her by surprise. Any excuse would do.” There was a marked bitterness in his tone.

  “Then he turned on Dan and me. Dan’s my brother. Didn’t matter what we did. If he wasn’t in the mood to hear our voices, we’d get smacked. If he said something to us and we didn’t answer fast enough, smack. If we left a toy out, it went in the trash and we got hit again. It wasn’t all that long before there weren’t many toys left in the house.

  “That’s when John told us what his father had been like in the past. The anger and violence he’d lived with, and the beatings he and his mother had taken. It stopped briefly when Mike started seeing Mom, and that gave John false hopes.”

  “How old was John when your mother married his father?”

  Paley closed his eyes, his lips tightened. He opened his eyes again before he spoke. “He must have been about thirteen or so. He said he wished he could have warned my mother, but he didn’t think she’d believe him because his dad was being so nice to us at first. And he couldn’t help but hope maybe his father was honestly changing. After all, by that time he’d had a year and a half without beatings.

  “When Mike started hitting us, John knew it would only get worse. And for every time Mike belted Dan and me, John got it two-fold. Mike seemed to strike out at anything that moved sometimes, but he had a real thing about John. It was like he hated him – for no apparent reason.” There was anger in his voice and he was practically spitting the words out, as though he felt John’s pain.

  “Did John ever talk about his mother?” I asked. I’d begun to watch Paley’s body language; it was speaking volumes, combined with his tone of voice.

  “He said he missed her, but he knew she was afraid to show her face. He kept hoping his mother would come take him away, but it never happened. She disappeared without a word, hiding out somewhere.

  “That’s when John started drinking, too, after Dan and I were in the picture. I don’t know where he got the booze, but he managed to find it somewhere.”

  I watched his face go through various contortions as he remembered the way things were. I remained quiet, not
wanting to interrupt his thoughts.

  “I remember one time when he snuck a beer out of his dad’s supply, figuring the old man wouldn’t notice. I thought Mike was going to kill him. Seems he knew exactly how many cans of beer he kept in the refrigerator. He didn’t care if his son was drinking, only that John took one of his beers. Figure that one out. Mom had to take John to the hospital for stitches that time. No one asked her any questions. They just stitched him up and sent him home.” And now there was sadness in Paley’s voice. This man was on a roller coaster of ugly memories.

  “I can’t imagine a parent treating a child like that. It’s so foreign to me.” I spoke softly. I was getting an all-too-vivid picture of what these boys and their mothers had lived through, and it made me uncomfortable, almost nauseous. In a way I didn’t want to hear anymore, but at the same time I knew I had to know it all.

  “Yeah, it was foreign to me, too, until Mike came along. My mother and Dan and I only went through it for a year and a half. John went through it for about fifteen years. Sometimes I think about it. I don’t know how he made it through those years.” He paused. “Guess he didn’t make it when you look at his track record.”

  “Didn’t your biological father know any of this was going on? Didn’t he try to help you?”

  “My father moved back to the east coast with a girlfriend after the divorce. We never heard from him again. He was a good man, but he had his own set of problems. I won’t go into that though, because it’s not relevant to this situation.”

  Kids’ views of people can be so screwed up. Paley was defending his real father, the man who should have been there to protect him, but who wasn’t. It made me angry. And then I noticed that Paley had clenched his fists.

  He leaned back and gazed out the window, an unfocused look in his eyes. He was seeing something I couldn’t. I didn’t push him to talk. I could see how it was affecting him. Tiny beads of sweat had popped out on his forehead. I had a feeling he might be telling me things he hadn’t talked about before. I sat quietly and waited. A sudden chill caused me to rub my arms.