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Welcome the Little Children

Page 16

by Lynda McDaniel


  40

  Della

  My foot was caught in the Overton’s front door.

  I’d been calling Christine for over a week, but I couldn’t get past her maid. The next Monday, I decided not to call but to show up on her doorstep at seven in the morning. Sammy was back to teaching, and I caught a break when his replacement was out front helping an old woman out of a taxi. I slipped into the elevator without anyone calling upstairs to announce me.

  A young Nordic woman answered. The maid, I presumed, though mercifully they didn’t make her dress in one of those black-and-white uniforms. “Would you please tell Christine I’m here?” She started to close the door in my face, which was when I stuck my foot in the door the way I’d seen private eyes do on TV.

  “She’s not here.” She sounded mousy, afraid even.

  “What is it, Hilde?” a mellifluous male voice called out. A tall man with perfectly sculpted gray hair stepped around the corner, dressed impeccably in a four-thousand dollar suit. The Hermès tie alone would shoot my clothes budget for months. I could easily picture him holding court around the conference table, but I couldn’t imagine his being very exciting to live with. Not compared to her construction goodfella, all muscles and swagger. They were polar opposites.

  Hilde held her hands out in a “I don’t know what to do” stance, but before Clifford could offer any counsel, I announced through the crack in the door, “I have a breakfast date with Christine.”

  He nodded at Hilde to let me in. “I’m sorry, Miss?” He motioned with his hand, implying I had rudely not given my name and should proceed. Ever the lawyer.

  “Ms. Kincaid. Della Kincaid.”

  “Well, Miss Kincaid. You must have gotten your dates mixed up. She’s out of town.”

  “But we made our plans just last week.”

  “She was called out of town to help a sick friend in New York. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to contact her when she gets back. Unless you’d like to join me for breakfast.” He motioned toward the kitchen area, but I knew the sly old bastard was just being cocky.

  “Thanks you so much, Mr. Overton. I seem to have lost my appetite.”

  The doorman was dealing with a stack of FedEx packages when I raced through the lobby; he didn’t even give me a glance. As I walked to the Metro station, the fresh air revived me; the stink of that expensive but prison-like building had started get to me. I thought about Clifford falling for Christine’s lame excuses. Sick friend, my ass. I was certain she’d gone on that trip to Hawaii or Tahiti she and Lover Boy had planned at the Hay-Adams—with the added benefit of getting away from me.

  I got the impression she’d be away for a week or more. Just as well, I supposed. I’d let it all ride a little longer, until I got back from Laurel Falls. I needed to drive down there again to check on some things that Mary Lou couldn’t and shouldn’t have to handle on her own. I was just about caught up with work for my editor, and Alex seemed in good spirits. I wasn’t even dreading the long drive with Jake. Some of my best thinking happened on the highway.

  Over the following week, Mary Lou and I worked our regular schedules. On my next alone day, I heard the bell over the door ring and looked up, hoping someone enjoyable like Abit or Cleva was stopping by for coffee and a chat. Or Astrid. I missed the little imp.

  Instead, I saw a hunk of a guy turning the Open sign to Closed.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I said, more from instinct than logic. He pulled a gun and motioned me toward the back. It took a moment before I realized the scene was for real. He motioned again. Figuring I’d have more luck out front, I moved as little as possible. And started talking. Jabbering, really.

  “There’s nothing to steal yet. It’s too early in the day. There is the forty dollars I start the day with, but that’s hardly worth gunpoint. Armed robbery, you know, is a far worse crime that just robbery. Put that gun away and here’s the forty.” I held out the bills, even though I knew that wasn’t what he was after.

  He scared the shit out of me, reminding me of the kind of guy I used to write about. Souls lost to poverty, abuse, drugs, war, greed—take your pick—doing desperate things to fill the emptiness of their lives. Any way you looked at it, America was becoming the land of too many opportunities for ruining your life.

  “Hand over the papers and photographs,” he said, moving closer with the gun, his voice deep and menacing.

  “What papers?”

  “Cut the shit, girlie. You know.” He did that thing again with the gun that means move it.

  “No, I don’t.” We went back and forth like that for a while, until a customer came up and knocked on the locked door.

  “Tell ‘em to get lost—and make it convincing,” he grunted.

  “Sorry,” I called out. “We’re closed, er, for inventory.”

  The Goon nodded his approval when he turned his head enough to see the customer head back to her car and drive off. “Now get in the back and find those papers. I’m not leaving till I get them—or I use this,” he said, waving the gun for emphasis. “Then I’ll find them on my own.”

  “They’re not here.”

  “You better hope they are.”

  “They’re upstairs. My office is up there. That’s where I keep them.”

  He looked confused about what to do next. His back was to the door, so he didn’t see Sheriff Horne walk up and look in the window, curious about why the store was closed at this hour. I pointed in a frantic sort of way, and The Goon turned. That gave Horne a view of the gun, and he kicked down the door, weapon drawn. A hail of gunshots rang out before The Goon ran out the door past a wounded sheriff.

  Horne had a flesh wound in his upper arm. Not life-threatening, but still, it needed professional attention. I couldn’t lift him, so I had to wait until he sat up and then stood up so I could help him into the back of the store. I kept a sizeable first-aid kit back there and found what I needed to clean and bandage his wound for the time being. I figured he didn’t want an ambulance and paramedics roaring to his rescue. Maybe for a shot to the gut, but for a flesh wound, he had his pride. He’d get around to reporting the intruder and gunshot wound in his own time.

  While we sat there, both of us getting our heart rates down to reasonable levels, I realized Horne had saved my life. I did have copies of the papers here, but they were upstairs in a hard-to-get-to space. I didn’t want to think about the logistics of going up the stairs to my apartment, pulling the bed away so I could get at the box underneath, Jake growling and carrying on. Maybe The Goon wouldn’t have shot me, but he would have hurt me, for sure. And Jake, too.

  “Remember our talk on friendship?” I asked. He nodded, wincing. “Well, you’re my friend forever. You saved my life.”

  “But I just needed some milk,” he said before passing out.

  41

  Della

  I called Lonnie Parker at the county office. By the time he arrived, Horne was awake again and talking. I kept telling Horne he was looking better and better—good as new once that wound healed. After a while, he asked, “Are you trying to get rid of me? I thought we were friends for life.”

  When I laughed, even I thought it sounded theatrical. But I wanted them gone. Customers would be flooding the place once word spread about the shootout at Colburn’s—and I had a call to make. Finally, Horne dragged himself out to the patrol car and waved gingerly as Lonnie drove off.

  I grabbed the phone and dialed Christine from memory. Lover Boy must have put a tail on me, because they knew I was back in Laurel Falls. And of course they knew I’d just had a visitor. What they didn’t know was what I was going to do about it.

  I was surprised when Christine answered. I managed to keep my voice even, but I could hear how strained it sounded. “You are one breath away from my handing these papers over to the sheriff, who suffered a bullet wound at the hand of your thug and who would love to throw both of you in jail. And your boyfriend, Roscoe Cohen, the mobster.”

  Unfazed, Christine shot ba
ck, “Yeah, but Jonathan would go, too.” Not I’m sorry, not I didn’t know anything about it. Just more attitude.

  “Not necessarily. I wrote up my report in a way that keeps Enoch/Jonathan out of it. It will be your word against mine.”

  “Oh, come on, Columbo. You think you’re such a hot-shit writer that the police won’t dig further into his past? The FBI may not be looking for him, but I’m sure he’s broken some kind of law—or laws. Then what happens to those kids you’re so fond of? Are you ready to risk that?”

  “Yes, I am. Because I know it won’t come to that. If it does, that means your world will have already turned upside down. Say goodbye to Clifford’s money. Say goodbye to all those secret trysts with Lover Boy. I don’t care what you have to tell either of those arrogant sons of bitches—by next week, I want confirmation from Enoch that the first installment for those kids has arrived in his mailbox. I’ve got those damning packets ready to go, and I’ve told our local sheriff—the one who is in pain right now thanks to your goon—where one is in case anything happens to me. And I mean anything. So you damn well better pray I wear my seat belt and look both ways when I cross the street, because you’re going down if anything happens to me.”

  I slammed the phone down. It wasn’t a sure thing, but I felt better. For a while. Then I changed my mind. I called Alex and asked him to have a courier deliver a sealed envelope with copies of the photos to Christine—and only Christine. I wanted to remind her how easy it would be to have them delivered directly to Clifford.

  42

  Della

  I waited until I got back to D.C. to contact Christine again. Of course, the deadline I’d demanded had passed, and she wasn’t returning my calls. I was sick of the drama, but I needed to talk with her. I decided not to press my luck trying to slip past the new doorman; I took a different tack.

  The next Thursday I waited at the coffee shop across from Chez Perry. I saw Christine sauntering down I Street around eleven; I gave her time to get settled in and covered in goop or polish or whatever she was having done. As I entered the spa, I could hear Chopin playing on a first-class sound system, though the thought of the delicate composer enduring competition from dryers and gossip—and noxious fumes in his delicate lungs—made me sad. The smell was the same as any beauty shop, though I was sure the word spa added at least one decimal to fees for services rendered.

  “May I help you?” asked a stiff-necked young woman, her shoulder-length earrings likely the cause of her limited range of motion.

  Her smile changed to puzzlement when I answered, “I’ll help myself.”

  The salon was divided into semi-private cubicles dripping with silver lame and tinselly things hanging from the ceiling. Somehow through the shimmering miasma, I saw Christine, who was enrobed in her own world of silver—the shiny salon cape and foil-wrapped spikes of hair sticking out all over her head.

  I stood behind her chair and shrieked, “You stole my husband, you, you …” I wasn’t faking the stammer. I honestly couldn’t find words harsh enough to describe that woman.

  Dryers turned off. Stories ended. I believe Chopin even stopped playing. For once, Christine didn’t have a quick retort. She stared at me, at first with incomprehension, then recognition, then rage. Like a personal performance of Dante’s Medusa and the Furies.

  I considered some physical tussling, but even I thought better of that. Just a little embellishment. “He’s leaving me and our three children practically on the street.”

  Christine stood so fast she knocked over the tray of hair color. When the manager threatened to call the police, Christine barked at her, “I’ll handle this!” Without a thought about her appearance, she ushered me out the front door. Even in the flurry of activity, it wasn’t lost on me that Mrs. High and Mighty Overton was standing on I Street NW in a getup no woman ever wanted to be caught wearing.

  “You got it now, Christine?” I asked before she could say anything. “No goons, no out of town trips, no gatekeeper maid will get me to stop. I’m like a dog with a bone. No, make that tick on a dog. I won’t let go.”

  “Ah, but you can be poisoned,” Christine said.

  “Fine, think up all the stupid plots you want, but don’t forget the packets—like the one I sent you. If anything happens to me, they go public—and directly to Cliffy.”

  She stormed back into the salon. She wasn’t in any position to go home, not with all those chemicals on her head. I hoped they’d burn her hair off like in that “I Love Lucy” episode when Ethel and Lucy watched their perm-rodded hair pop onto the table as they played cards.

  I went back to the coffee shop and waited, enjoying an espresso and a celebratory croissant while Christine finished getting coifed. Finally, she came out and hailed a cab. I ran out and trotted along behind it. For once, I loved D.C. traffic—so slow I could keep pace on foot. When we arrived at The Meridian, the doorman asked if he could help me.

  “Just waiting for my friend, Christine Overton,” I said, pointing to the cab that had just pulled up. But the words were barely out of my mouth when the cab speeded away and turned the corner. I smiled sheepishly at the doorman and headed to a bench across the street.

  Two hours later, Christine got out of a black car with dark tinted windows. It sped away after she closed the passenger door; I got the license number, just in case. I jogged across the busy road, dodging between cars. As the doorman opened the front door for Christine, I scooted through.

  When he called out “Mrs. Overton” with an inquiring tone, she waved him off.

  “Well, I see the tick is back.”

  “Never really left.”

  “You might as well come up.”

  I wanted to tell her that her hair looked a little over-processed, but I decided not to push my luck.

  In a reprise of my earlier visit, she started hitting the bottle pretty hard. The more tipsy she got, the more she spilled the beans. Like the fact that she wasn’t bipolar. All that had been part of her ruse to get away from Laurel Falls and her family. She was depressed living there, she told me, but that was because, well, she was living there.

  “I staged the whole disappearing act,” she told me with slurred words. “I saved pennies for a couple of years from that stingy bastard and finally had enough to get away.”

  “So the trip to Chester and doctor’s appointment were part of your getaway plans?”

  “Mostly, except for missing the bus and catching a ride to that godforsaken truck stop. And then that truck driver scaring the shit out of me.” She went into detail about the shortcut the Potash 3K truck driver took and confirmed that she’d thought he was heading somewhere remote to rape her. After she jumped out, Flora Pearce gave her a ride into Chester. But by that time, she’d missed her doctor’s appointment. With a brittle laugh she added, “That doctor wasn’t treating my so-called bipolar condition; I’d been seeing him because he gave me some cool drugs for my depression.”

  “And what about that diary of yours?”

  “I was hoping someone would find that. I needed a little help from Stephen King, but it added a nice touch, eh?”

  I hated that woman. I got it that living in the middle of nowhere could get to you, especially when you were accustomed, as she’d bragged, to a life of money and privilege. But she was so glib about what she’d done to three other family members, not to mention all those volunteers who traipsed through hot, buggy fields to try to find her.

  I had a lot more questions, and I needed to get to them fast before she passed out or got violent. “Why don’t you start at the beginning—that Thursday when you left home?”

  I could tell she hated being interrogated by me, but she cooperated. Maybe she’d finally grasped what a tight corner she’d backed into. “I got out before dawn with that tiny suitcase. I bought that thing mostly because it was cheap and small. I figured that would throw people off—no one would escape with none of her clothes, right? But I didn’t want any of that crap. I planned to buy everything n
ew. Start over. Anyway, it was small enough I thought it would be easy to cut through some fields to get to the highway the shortest way. But the wheels kept getting tangled in brush. That’s when I cut my hand on barbed wire. Goddam stuff is everywhere.” From there, her account matched Dibble’s latest story, except for her take on his shortcut.

  “What about that old suitcase of yours strewn above the creek?” I asked.

  She laughed. “I told Astrid I was taking that suitcase to Goodwill, but I stashed it in the house where even that nosy creature wouldn’t find it. When she was off at your store one day, I packed it with some of my clothes and hid it near the creek to throw suspicion on Jonathan. That weasel deserved it.

  “I was planning to leave soon, but not for a few days. I needed those drugs first from that doctor who didn’t ask a lot of questions. Chester was only supposed to be a day trip, but when I missed that appointment, Dolores managed to squeeze me in the next day. I’d been gone before without Enoch knowing where I was, so what the hell? I got a room and stayed over. It felt luxurious, even in that hick town.”

  So Dolores Lopez, who’d been so vigilant about patient privacy, worked for a drug-dispensing doctor. And she’d withheld information about the second appointment, throwing Sheriff Horne off track for days. So much for pristine professional ethics.

  Christine asked me if I wanted any coffee. I said yes, only to keep her busy and talking. And maybe it would help sober her up. While she fussed with a fancy Rancilio espresso machine, she told me more. “I didn’t get home Friday until after seven. Jonathan was there with that Earth Mother, Maddie Something-or-other, who was fixing dinner. I didn’t give a flip about Jonathan, and I actually saw Earth Mother as my ticket out. I figured he’d hook up with her and the kids would be better off. But I was hot and tired and seeing them in that little domestic scene pissed me off. Just like that,” she added, snapping her fingers, “I decided to leave early. Leave then.”

 

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