by Debbie Burke
Then Tawny entered the video lab and spotted the drama teacher. She immediately wondered if he might be the one Mimi had met in the faculty parking lot. He was about thirty, breathtakingly good looking, with a heavy mop of blond hair, intense blue eyes, and full lips—just the sort of brooding hunk that impressionable young women crushed on.
She walked past students working at computers and approached him. “Mr. Todd?”
He looked up from his laptop with a guarded expression.
“I’m Tawny Lindholm. I’m here about Mimi Rosenbaum.”
“What about her?”
“Could we talk?” She glanced at the nearby students. “Somewhere private?”
“She’s been absent for the last two days.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. She won’t be in class for a while and I hoped to get her assignments so she can keep up.”
“This is a hands-on film workshop. If she isn’t in class, she can’t do the required work.” His abrupt tone bordered on rudeness.
“Would you just give me a few minutes, outside?”
He huffed, shut down his laptop, and rose to follow her to the empty hall. After he’d closed the door, he faced Tawny. He was a little shorter than she was, maybe five-seven, with a muscular build under his form-fitting black T-shirt and jeans. “Now what?”
“Did Ms. Gibson email you?”
“She emails faculty fifteen times a day.” The curl of his lip indicated he thought that was fifteen times too many.
“She wanted you to know that you have permission to talk to me. I work for Mimi’s father.”
“And that matters because?”
Surly SOB. “Do you know why Mimi is missing school?”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me.”
Guard raised, she decided not to mention the suicide attempt. He might not know. Or be playing coy because he did know. “She’s out of town with her parents. She’s having some problems and I hoped you’d share any insights you might have that could help.”
“Insights?”
“Does she like your class?”
“She adores it. She’s a born director. Her eye for scene set up, her organizational ability, and her comprehension of the hidden agendas of characters is beyond belief.”
“She’s been doing well in the class?”
“Fabulously. If she pursues filmmaking as a career, she’ll be another Lana Wachowski.”
Tawny didn’t recognize the name but assumed Todd was giving Mimi a compliment. “Does she talk to you about her goals? What she wants to do?”
“She’s torn. That’s the problem with many gifted young women. They could succeed in whatever profession they choose. It’s almost like Mimi has too many options, too many opportunities.”
“That sounds like a good problem to have.”
His jaw tightened. “The pressure is on her to pursue all of them and to be perfect at all of them.”
“Where is the pressure coming from?”
He tapped his chest. “Inside. Her age doesn’t reflect her actual maturity and her expectations of herself. She’s much more mature and goal-oriented, driven.”
Like her dad, Tawny thought.
Todd’s gaze turned inward. “She has an old soul.”
Again, the hint that Mimi was older than her chronological age. “Does she have friends in the class, kids she hangs with outside of school?”
“Not really. She interacts during assignments but not more than she has to.”
“Keeps to herself?”
Todd regarded her, full lips pursed. “You could say that.”
How to get around to Mimi’s possible ride from the faculty parking lot? “Do your classes work out in the field? Like shooting on location?”
“CGI changed a lot of that. You heard of that?”
“Computer-generated imagery?”
One eyebrow lifted, as if surprised that she knew the term. “Yeah. Instead of the entire Roman army galloping down the hill, software extrapolates the figures. It’s all pixels now, not actors and horses.”
“But do you still take field trips? Load up the kids and cameras and computers?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“Did you go out last Friday?”
His eyes turned as hard and cold as blue diamonds. “What about last Friday?”
Uh-oh. Ease up. “Mimi asked her sister to drive her truck home because she was meeting some people. I thought it might be a group from your class.”
“They didn’t do anything Friday.”
“Oh. OK. Must have been some other activity.” She couldn’t think how to probe further, except to launch a straight-out Tillman-style attack. “Are you and Mimi friends?”
He drew back. “Are you implying what I think you’re implying?”
She held her gaze steady. “I’m asking if Mimi confided in you about things outside of her schoolwork.”
His lip twitched. “Confided?”
“Kids sometimes tell more to their favorite teacher than they tell their parents.” As if he didn’t know that.
“Are you suggesting there’s something inappropriate going on?”
She wanted to say: Is there? Instead, she waited in silence.
Todd turned away and strode toward the door. “I’m going back to my class.”
One last shot. “Mr. Todd.”
He paused, looked over his shoulder.
“I’m trying to help Mimi. If you care about her, she needs all the help she can get right now.”
He hesitated a few seconds then took three steps toward her. His words came in a low hiss: “Mimi’s a talented but troubled young woman. However, your inference is way off base. If you’re accusing me of inappropriate behavior, look elsewhere. I’m gay.” He pivoted and returned to his classroom, banging the door hard on Tawny’s suspicions.
****
With the kids at school, Tawny again found herself rattling around in Tillman’s huge house. The arrival of Florentino was a welcome diversion. She went out to the driveway to greet him as he unfastened the straps anchoring the riding mower to the trailer.
“Buenos días,” Tawny said. “Cómo está?”
“Muy bien, señora.” Florentino smiled broadly. “You speak Spanish bueno.”
“Well, I’m afraid that’s pretty much my whole vocabulary.” The nippy spring breeze made her wish she’d put on a jacket before coming outside. The truck’s radiator gave off heat. She leaned against the grille’s comforting warmth. “How is Fausto?”
Florentino shrugged. “A little better. Consuelo is at the hospital with him. More tests, X-rays. He still worries about Señor Tillman’s horses.”
“Please tell him they’re fine. I gave them apples.” She remembered her conversation with the injured man. “Fausto said you might take care of the horses.”
He tilted his head sideways. “Sí, I am happy to do that.” A frown crossed his features. “Señora, can you talk with Señor Tillman?”
“Yes, he’s out of town but he calls me.”
“I need to tell him about a problem.”
“Problem?”
“Fausto tells me to salvage parts from his truck for my truck. It is same model but one year different. I go to wrecking yard yesterday. Poor truck, twisted like a knot. I look under, see the brakes.”
“What about them?”
He frowned. “The line is broken partway. Brake fluid run out.”
Fausto had mentioned the brakes failed before he hit the tumbling boulder. A new worry gnawed at her. “You mean, someone deliberately cut the brake line?”
He spread his hands wide and grimaced. “Not for sure. But maybe.”
“Who would do that?”
Florentino shrugged. “Fausto is a good man. Many amigos, no enemies. I don’t know.”
“Tillman will want to see the parts. Do you have them?”
“Sí, I save them in my garage.”
Tawny bit her knuckle in frustration at the hurdles that
blocked her from talking to Tillman. “Let me try to reach him.” She pulled the phone from her pocket and tapped the satellite number at the retreat. It rang four times and went to voice mail. She left a message without details since she didn’t know who monitored the suicide camp’s calls. She disconnected and shrugged at Florentino. “He’s where there’s no cell service. I don’t know when he’ll get the message. Can I have your number and I’ll have him call you?”
They traded numbers then Florentino touched his hat. “Gracias, Señora. Now I should work.” He waved his arm across the property. “Very big yard.”
After shaking hands, Tawny went inside, twisting her braid. Suspicion prickled on the back of her neck. Why did someone try to kill Fausto? Could it be connected to the surveillance on Tillman? If an enemy wanted to harm Tillman, why cut the brake lines on his employee’s truck? It made no sense.
Tillman didn’t believe in coincidence and, the longer she was with him, the more that belief rubbed off on her.
****
Rochelle’s skin burned as if thousands of fire ants were biting her. The foul-smelling cream prescribed by her dermatologist did nothing to ease the maddening itch and pain. It’s just hives. As if that diagnosis justified her agony.
She sat on the lumpy single bed in a musty little cabin, her living quarters during Mimi’s treatment. The retreat website had quaintly described accommodations as “guest cottages” but in reality, the shack was revolting. Cobwebs hung in the corners and sawdust sifted down on her at night as she tried to sleep. She shuddered to imagine what vermin crawled in the rafters.
Scratching her skin only made the rawness and burning worse yet the urge overwhelmed her. Just lightly with the tips of her acrylic nails. She couldn’t give into the desire to dig in with both hands, as if she could excavate deeply enough that the pain could be dug out and cast away like a cancer.
This retreat wasn’t working. Not for herself, not for Mimi. The girl doggedly resisted the counselors’ efforts to reach her. She was as stubborn and infuriating as Tillman. She’d taken a vow of silence and dynamite wouldn’t blast her out of it.
Why was she doing this to Rochelle? Punishing her with icy silence and hateful looks. Humiliating her in front of colleagues and friends. The last-minute cancellation of the bar mitzvah had fueled gossip all over Billings. Rochelle suspected Mimi purposely timed her suicide stunt to cause maximum inconvenience and shame.
Rochelle had given her daughter everything she herself had been deprived of. Even the damn horse Mimi had demanded. Ungrateful little snot. Always crying and sulking and monopolizing Tillman’s attention on the rare occasions he was home.
Here, at the retreat, Rochelle had religiously performed the mental and spiritual meditations the resident psychologist recommended. Why didn’t they work against her outbreak of hives?
Because she couldn’t meditate away her guilt.
Guilt for not loving her firstborn. The postpartum depression had never completely abated. She couldn’t help that the connection with her children never fully formed. She went through the motions but couldn’t fake the feelings Tillman thought she should have and demanded of her.
The divorce was supposed to make her life easier. But it only made it worse. She regretted that she’d fought Tillman about custody. She should’ve let him have the damn children he wanted so much. He could deal with the responsibility, the endless demands, and aggravations.
But that would have meant leaving the estate and abandoning the image she had carefully cultivated among colleagues, neighbors, friends. And now Mimi was trying to destroy that image with her selfishness.
Rochelle scratched harder, trying to quell the pain that burned deeper than her skin. Her image had become her prison. She couldn’t let down the façade, even as it walled her deeper into misery.
If only Tillman would hit her. That would solve her problem. She could get a protection order. He’d have to leave the house. She’d have control. Damn him, why didn’t he hit her?
But he never did, never would, no matter how much she tried to provoke him.
He needed to be gone, out of the way.
Steve promised he was working on that, lobbying Tillman to open a branch office in Kalispell to be closer to that woman he was so infatuated with. But Rochelle knew her ex too well. He wouldn’t give up the home and his children. He recognized the clients and money were in Billings, not Kalispell.
Steve had to come up with another plan. He hated Tillman as much as she did. And she knew Steve would do anything for her.
Chapter 12 – Eyes in the Sky
Tawny turned the burner to simmer under the kettle of spaghetti sauce and skipped down the stairs to check on the kids who were supposed to be doing homework before dinner.
Arielle wasn’t in her room unless she’d gotten buried under an avalanche of discarded clothes. On her sketch pad, Tawny noticed new pencil drawings of black models with beautiful intricate braids woven around their heads. The girl really had a gift.
In Judah’s room, almost as messy and chaotic as Arielle’s, the boy sprawled on his bed, tapping his tablet, earbuds in. An empty plate sat beside him, only crumbs left from the loaf of banana bread Tawny had baked earlier.
“Did you read your chapters?” she asked.
“Yeah, finished the whole book.”
“Good job.”
He tapped the empty plate. “Hey, that banana bread was really good. I like chocolate chips and nuts.”
Tawny winked. “Too bad you didn’t save a piece for your sister. Where is she?”
“Who knows?” He roused from the bed, tossed his tablet aside, and pulled out earbuds. “Wanna go fly my drone?”
“Sure,” Tawny said. “You like your present?”
He lifted one shoulder. “It’s bitchen. Me and Dad flew it until the battery went dead. He said it needed to be plugged in overnight. Should have a full charge by now.”
He took the strange little craft from a shelf and handed it to her. It looked like an elongated camera lens with four extended arms, each with a propeller. The whole device measured about a foot square. He picked up the controller and led the way.
As they walked down the long hall, Tawny peeked into rooms. No sign of Arielle. Where was she? Easy to disappear in seven-thousand square feet. Tawny tried to reassure herself that she didn’t need to keep constant eyes on a fifteen-year-old. But the responsibility for two kids she barely knew weighed heavy on her mind.
In the back yard, Judah chattered about downdrafts and turbulence on the Rimrocks and how they kept screwing up his control of the drone. She didn’t follow the jargon he tossed out but was just happy he seemed interested in the gift his dad had given him.
They stood on a rocky outcropping overlooking steep canyons on either side. The boy set the drone in motion, working two joysticks on the controller with his thumbs. The drone wobbled side to side as he practiced his technique. When he directed it out over the edge of the ravine, it dipped abruptly, and nearly crashed into the rocks below. He manipulated one joystick frantically. The drone recovered but then zoomed too high, almost running into branches of a giant Ponderosa pine.
Within several minutes, his skill had improved to the point where Tawny didn’t suck in a breath every time it flew near a hazard. He turned on the camera and recorded a video of himself and Tawny on the ground, necks craned up, watching the drone watch them.
“You want to try?” he asked.
She waved her hands in front of her. “No way. If it crashed, I’d feel awful.”
“Aw, come on. I just started and I haven’t crashed yet.” His grin held a challenge.
“OK. Show me what to do.”
He demonstrated the various controls—up, down, right, left. “It’s easy, really. And if you take both thumbs off the joysticks, it just hovers.”
She accepted the controller from him. Immediately the drone dipped downhill into the ravine. Quickly she bumped the lever up and managed to steady it. She soon got us
ed to the feel of the controls and learned to maneuver away from obstacles.
The drone sailed like a bird, swooping through the bright blue sky. The camera scanned the steep hillside below, giving Tawny the illusion of flying, even though her feet remained on the ground.
Down in a canyon, a coyote trotted into view on the monitor.
“Hey, look at that,” Judah said, peering past her shoulder. “Cool.”
Tawny handed the controller back to him. “Here. You follow it, see where it goes.”
He zoomed in on the animal as it crouched behind boulders, watching for prey. A vole emerged from a crack between rocks. The coyote pounced but missed as the rodent scurried into a hole. They watched the coyote dig for several moments before Judah lost interest in the unsuccessful hunt.
He sent the drone soaring high again, sweeping above the houses across the ravine, including the one where Tawny had seen the suspicious man with the rifle.
“Maybe you shouldn’t fly so close to those houses,” she warned.
“I just want to look down on the rooftops.” The drone skimmed between two homes, banked up, then hovered above the Spanish three-story, its camera showing the view of the red tile roof.
“It’s getting kind of far away.” Nervousness nibbled at her. “What’s the range?”
“As long as it’s in my line of sight, no sweat. Just across the canyon isn’t even close to the outer limit.”
“Somebody might not like you spying on them.”
“Place is for sale. Nobody’s there.”
“Judah, please bring it back.”
With a disgusted huff, he directed the drone away from the vacant house. It flew out over the edge of Rimrocks into the endless horizon. “Updrafts aren’t so strong today,” he said. “I’m controlling it better.”
Suddenly a loud crack echoed off the rocks. The drone fell from the sky, hit a boulder, and cartwheeled out of sight, disappearing into a precipice.
Tawny grabbed Judah by the scruff of his hoody and shoved him under the cover of the massive pine. She pressed her body over his to shield him, her hands on either side, grating against the rough tree bark, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
