Tell Anna She's Safe

by Brenda Missen

  “Don’t think I ever gave you one of these,” he said. “Use it, will you? If you ever need to.”

  I took the card. Flicked the edge with my finger. “Thanks, I will.” I managed a smile. “If I need to.”

  “That other number’s my pager,” nodded Lundy.

  “Hey, we getting a little personal here? Your pager? What next?”

  Sergeant Howard Roach was suddenly standing over us.

  Lundy winked at me. “Safer to call me than the Roach. I’m a happily married man.”

  Sergeant Roach turned a chair around, swung a leg over it and sat down, leaning his arms on the back of it. “You’re a son of a bitch with a roving eye. Don’t listen to him, Ellen. Whatever he’s been tellin’ you. He’s full of shit.” His tone was nothing but pleasant.

  “Watch your mouth, Howie. There’s a lady present.”

  “Yeah, and we were supposed to take her to lunch. Sorry, Ellen. Blame the Crown.”

  “She’s okay,” said Lundy. “She got the lunch she was after.” He nodded at my cup.

  Roach peered into it. Sniffed. Smiled. “Crown Royal, we call that. Emphasis on ‘Crown.’ Glad Big Al’s been lookin’ after you. But I gotta take him away. Sorry—Crown’s orders.”

  As usual Sergeant Roach was looking everywhere but at me as he spoke. Not much got past him either. Wherever it was happening.

  The two men stood up.

  “I was just giving Ellen some information I thought it might be good for her to know.”

  “Something she didn’t know?”

  “Well, I think she did. I was just giving her the facts.”

  “What more is there?” Roach’s face held a bland, innocent look.

  “We’ll never know,” said Lundy. “They only pay us to deal with facts.”

  I liked Al Lundy. A lot. I suddenly remembered Quinn telling me to ask them about Bryn. “Someday I’d like to hear the story of how Tim happened to find the body.”

  “‘Happened’ is right,” said Lundy, making quotation marks in the air. “He was supposedly continuing the search.”

  “With his new ‘bimbo,’” added Roach.

  “Except she was working for us,” said Lundy.

  “She was amazing,” said Roach. “The way she got him to take her into his confidence.” He shook his head.

  “Course, a couple of things helped,” said Lundy.

  I looked from one to the other. They had their alternating lines down like a comic routine.

  “Money for one thing,” said Roach.

  “A big car,” said Lundy.

  “And a big set of knockers.” Roach held his hands cupped out in front of him. He looked around and put them down. “He thought he had it made. Stupid jerk.”

  “In the news it said he walked into the police station. Did he give himself up?”

  Lundy snorted. “Hardly. He was still playing the innocent boyfriend. But we arrested him immediately. We were counting on him to find the body. In fact that was the only reason we could arrest him.”

  “Why?”

  “If anyone else had found it we wouldn’t have a case against him. There’s no other solid evidence. But the ‘coincidence’ of this happening is just a bit too staggering.”

  “So the argument is that he knew all along where the body was.”

  “Yup, but he’s claiming he was framed. That Bryn was the one who actually spotted the body. That we planted her.”

  “But she approached Brennan on her own,” said Roach. “She’d talked to him before we even hired her. In fact, that’s how we found her—we had Lucy’s house bugged. We heard her interviewing Brennan. We called her in to see if she wanted to help. She did. She’d become convinced from talking to him that he was guilty.”

  “He slipped up with her too—the way he did with you.” Lundy was nodding at me. “Told her the car had been found ‘exactly the way I left it.’” He made quotation marks in the air again. “Then corrected himself to say ‘exactly the way she would have left it.’”

  This was even more damning than the things he’d said to me. It was good to find out he’d slipped up verbally with other people too. That I hadn’t imagined it. And maybe it would lend weight to my evidence at the trial.

  “We made sure she was on the level,” Roach was saying. “Then we figured out a plan. Told her what to do. What to say.” He shook his head. “The balls of that woman.”

  “I wish I could have been more help.” I didn’t though. Not in that way. I knew that now.

  “Your support of Lucy was the best help we could have had,” came the bland reply.

  They shook my hand in turn. They thanked me for doing my bit.

  “See you at the trial,” said Roach. “It’ll likely get going in a year or two. We’ll be in touch.”

  I watched them leave. Big slow-walking men with an aptitude for solving murders.

  I didn’t tell them the trial had just ended.

  I was heading for the phone booths in the main entrance when a stocky, freckled woman stopped in front of me. “I’m sorry this is the way we had to meet again.”

  I stared at her. She wore her hair pulled back. She had puffy eyes, as if from crying, or lack of sleep. It was no one I recognized. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  “Marnie Baxter.”

  I tried to hide my stunned surprise. “You’re here to give evidence at the hearing.”

  She nodded. “This afternoon. Are you done?”

  “Yes, just finished. Thank God.”

  “I’ve been trying to come to terms with what happened. I can’t believe how I gave Tim the benefit of the doubt. Searching with him those first few days.” She seemed to shudder.

  I looked around the hall. I was probably not supposed to be talking with another witness. “Did you know him well?”

  “No, not well. We—Trish and I—we tried to be a friend to both of them. We had a few meals with them. He’s a sociopath. He becomes whoever he thinks you want him to be.”

  I looked at her. Who did he become for you?

  I chose my next words with care. “There were some of her friends who only saw the innocent soul. The people I spoke to feel he betrayed their trust.”

  “He did,” said Marnie.

  I looked into her eyes. Could this woman who knew Lucy be equally responsible for her murder? Had she got caught up in something that had gotten out of control? Something that had made her afraid to come forward because she would be implicated?

  It was impossible to believe—despite the contradictions in her partner’s words, despite my own psychic experiences. Thank goodness I wasn’t being asked to judge.

  She was watching me through her troubled puffy eyes. Troubled and, it seemed, wary. “Maybe, after this—maybe we could get together, compare notes.”

  “Maybe,” I said, and left her to take the stand.

  I called Angel from a pay phone. I told him I was done and taking the rest of the day off.

  He’d already figured as much. He told me to go unwind.

  I told him that was exactly what I was planning to do.

  25.

  KENDRA MACKENZIE WAS AS TALL as I was. Big-boned. She had blonde hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Clear eyes and a generous smile. And Trish’s strong-looking massage-therapist’s hands. I liked her instantly.

  “I think it’s my head that needs to be massaged most,” I told her before she started. “I just finished testifying at the hearing for Lucy Stockman, and it won’t stop spinning around.”

  Kendra looked sympathetic. “Curtis told me you were involved in that case. It’s been rough on everyone. Don’t worry, massaging the rest of you will still your brain. And release some of the tension from the hearing.”

  I was skeptical. Not
only was there all the new information about Quinn, there was also a fresh doubt that I had done anything for Lucy, either in searching or in testifying. And then there was meeting Marnie again. She held no place in the police’s theory. Maybe for good reason. Or maybe things were not as simple as they wanted them to be.

  I felt Kendra’s hands trying to loosen up what Curtis called the “plank” in my back, sure that she wasn’t going to succeed. But gradually, in spite of myself, I felt myself relaxing, drifting away. I dozed off and on through much of the hour, waking up briefly when Kendra got me to turn over on my back, and then again when her healing hands had finished their work.

  She came back into the room when I’d dressed.

  “Thank you. I’ve just become a convert to massage. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to come here.”

  “I think you came at the right time,” she smiled. Then she paused, as if hesitant to say something. “I don’t really understand this,” she said at last. “But while I was working on you, I kept having this thought go through my head that I think I’m supposed to pass on to you.” She smiled at my startled face. “It sometimes happens with clients.”

  At one time, not that long ago, I would have dismissed her as a flake. I wouldn’t have been here at all. But now I looked at her, and for some reason I wanted to cry.

  “You know the truth,” she said. “That’s the message I kept getting. Does that make any sense to you?”

  I nodded, and then my eyes did fill with tears.

  Traffic was light on the highway through Hull. I took in, and released, large quantities of air. All the way up the rise to the hills and the turn-off at Tulip Valley. I couldn’t stop.

  The trial was over. I could step out of the prisoner’s box. The witness had finished testifying. The Crown had rested her case. The jury had reached its verdict. The judge was going home. The judge, in fact, was going to retire. For good.

  I was guilty and not guilty.

  Which makes me innocent. And in my innocence, protected. I had had nothing to fear from Tim. He had not been going to harm me. Whether he was evil or not. I was not the judge of that. There was only one thing I needed to know: that I could rely on my instincts—on my interior voice, which the trauma of this experience had forced me to start hearing. It was not about losing control. It was, in fact, the very opposite. It had taken the vision in the pine grove to get me to listen to myself. That vision had had immediate verification—and from Quinn himself. My world, as Mr. Blair had reminded me, had been turned completely upside down. But now—now it was inside out.

  I made the turn onto the 105, rather than onto River Road for home. I still had time before dark.

  Big wet snowflakes began to fall. I watched the snow melt on contact with my windshield, thinking about my visions and the police’s theory. The police had the facts, but they didn’t have the story between the facts. What if they had joined up the facts wrong? If you connected the dots in the wrong order, you would get a different picture. The same was true if you were missing some of the dots. You’d get a more straightforward picture. A simpler story than the one in my dreams and visions. The story I had gotten didn’t contradict the facts. It was just more complex. So much more complex. The truth often was. And I, apparently, knew the truth. Lucy had been giving it to me all along.

  *

  THE PHONE WOKE HER UP. It was Curtis, calling to find out if she was coming up the next day.

  She hesitated. The volume on the TV upstairs had been abruptly turned down. Was Tim listening? “I’m not sure if it’ll work,” she said, “though I’d like to. Can I let you know later this evening?”

  The cottage loomed a haven in her mind—or a hell if Tim chose to make it one.

  Then she saw the time. Shit. It was almost six. The bank would be closing. “Curtis, I’m sorry, I have to go. I have to call the bank. I’ll call you later this evening.”

  She eased her body up the stairs. Tim was sitting at the kitchen table, flipping the pages of the Sun.

  “Bill wired the money.”

  Surprise. Suspicion. Hope. Elation. “How do you know?”

  “Cuz I talked to him while you were sleeping. He said it will be in your account by Monday.”

  “Monday,” she repeated. “It should be there now. If I phone the bank now, it should be there.”

  Tim glanced up at the clock. “Bank’s closed. He just got there at the end of the day. They said it was too late to process today.”

  “That’s bullshit. You’re lying to me.”

  The word infuriated him. He stood up, gripped her cheeks in his hand, squeezed. “I do not lie.”

  He let go of her face. She swallowed, tasted blood in her mouth. “My bank’s open on Saturdays. If Bill got to his bank before it closed, the money will show up in my account tomorrow.”

  She braced herself for the blow.

  But the blow didn’t come. Instead, Tim was staring off into the room. It made her uneasy, that vacant stare.

  Finally, he focused back on her. She couldn’t look into his eyes. They weren’t the eyes she knew. Suddenly, she didn’t know him anymore. What had happened to them? What had happened to Tim?

  “Don’t you understand? I’m worried about you.” His voice was cajoling.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you worry?”

  “What are you talking about?” For a bizarre moment she thought she was talking to Curtis.

  “He hurt you before. He might hurt you again.”

  “Who?”

  “That weasel. Curtis.”

  “Curtis! He never hurt me!”

  “He did. You told me. He’s jealous.”

  She stared at him.

  “He might lose it, Lu. He might hurt you. I’m scared for you. Don’t go up there. Please don’t go up there.”

  “I haven’t said I’m going up there. And even if I was, you’re being ridiculous. Curtis is not going to hurt me. You don’t know the first thing about him.”

  Tim’s eyes were suddenly filled with hatred. He spoke in a monotone voice that wasn’t his. “I know everything about him. I watch his every move. I know what he’s thinking. I know how jealous he is. I know that if you just look at another man, he’s going to lose it.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Tim. Stop sounding so hysterical.” She turned away in disgust.

  Tim grabbed her arm, pulled her around to face him.

  She yanked her arm so hard it came free. The momentum it gained was the wind up to a pitch; her fist was the ball. It connected with Tim’s stomach.

  He wasn’t prepared. Her fist hit softness. Not the softness of her mother’s stomach, but enough to make her step back for one stunned moment, expecting to see her mother’s eyes, full of shock and pain and hurt.

  Instead she saw rage. Rage and ridicule.

  “Go ahead—go ahead and hit me. I deserve it.” He grabbed her wrist. He jammed himself in the stomach with her hand, over and over.

  She ignored the pain in her hand. She watched it as if it was someone else’s hand punching him. She spoke as if the bizarre assault wasn’t happening. “If that money isn’t in my account by noon tomorrow….”

  “What? What will you do? Punch me in the stomach again? Like this?”

  “I’ll call the police!”

  He stopped in mid-punch. Her hand felt like jelly.

  “And tell them what?”

  “That you’ve defrauded me out of thousands of dollars. That you’ve stolen from me, and probably from other people too.”

  He couldn’t hide what was in his eyes. She saw it. Unease. Trepidation. Guilt.

  She pressed her advantage. “I can’t help you anymore. I tried and look what you’ve done to me. You’ve lied to me and cheated me and stolen from me.”


  Tim dropped her hand. He sank down into a kitchen chair.

  She kept talking. Maybe if she kept talking, he would surrender, admit defeat. Admit his lies. Admit he needed help.

  “I know you can’t help it. It’s not your fault. I understand why you’ve been stealing from me. I wanted you to be independent. I guess I wanted it too soon. I shouldn’t have cut you off my account. I was naive to think you could cope. It’s the only way you know how to survive. But it doesn’t work, Tim. You can’t keep taking from me. Your survival is going to be the death of me.”

  “No!” He looked up. “I would never do anything to hurt you. You know that, Lu. I love you.”

  “I can’t cope anymore. I don’t know how to help you anymore. You need real help. More than I can give you. More than your psychologist can give you.” She stopped herself from saying “medical help.”

  Panic in his eyes. “But you won’t leave me? Tell me you won’t leave me. Tell me, Lu.”

  Her voice was gentle. Gentle in its infinite weariness. “I can’t do this anymore, Tim. I have nothing left to give. Look at me. I’m spent. Used up. You’ve got to—”

  “But once I’m in my own place….”

  She shook her head. “It’s over, Tim. I’m sorry, but it’s over.”

  She hadn’t meant to say that outright. Not yet. Not until she had confirmed the money was in her account. She braced herself, waiting for the rage and the blows. But Tim started to shake. His eyes glazed over. She watched him as if he were herself, having a panic attack. Confused, shaking, weeping. He sat on the kitchen floor, hugging himself, rocking. “Help me, Lu. Help me.”

  She knelt down beside him. She held him. Stroked his face. Crooned to him. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.”

  He continued to tremble, to rock himself. What should she do? Should she take him to the hospital? The Royal Ottawa? Was he having a nervous breakdown?

  But at the word “hospital,” Tim’s shaking increased. “I’m too scared to go there. Don’t make me go, Lu. Don’t leave me. Please.”

  She was becoming more agitated. What did she do when she was overwhelmed? “Let’s go see Trish. Maybe she can help.”