Another tingle. “You were dirty, weren’t you? That’s why you didn’t make your twenty. That’s why you live in this shithole and work private security, even though you’re not much good at it. Something went down and they just turned you loose, quietly.”
“Weren’t we all a little dirty? If you get down to brass tacks?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Good for you. I’m supporting two households. And I’m not like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Gossip cuts two ways. You know I didn’t make my twenty. Well, I also didn’t make the state support my kid when it turned out he was a retard.”
Sandy counted to ten, in both his languages. So there it was, the judgment he was always afraid to face. This is why he didn’t talk about family stuff with Tess. Yet now that he had heard the dreaded words from Brian, they hurt less than he had thought they would. He remembered his wife, going to her parents and begging them to help pay for the institutional placement that Bobby Junior needed after he all but killed Mary. He thought about his son, whom he had stopped going to see because, since Mary died, they simply had no connection. She had held them together. She was what had made them a family and, once she was gone, it was as if there had never been a family at all. Sandy stood, smoothed his tie, shot his cuffs. He still dressed like a murder police. He still had his pride.
“You liked her,” he repeated. “You were jealous of anyone who was close to her. Maybe you did the trainer. Maybe you did the husband.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“You want to tell me where you were Friday night?”
“I don’t want to tell you shit, beaner.”
Beaner. Guy couldn’t even get his ethnic slurs right.
“Well, I have things to do. You know how it is, when you have a job. Oh, wait—you don’t.” Sandy took out his business card, placed it on top of the jar of coins. “I hear the Harem down on the Block is looking for a bouncer. Feel free to use me as a reference, I’d be happy to say you’re not the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.”
3:30 P.M.
Alanna sat in front of her car outside the Roland Park library. She wouldn’t be able to stay there for long, even though she was out of uniform. Anyone who looked remotely school age got hassled by the librarians. Same at Eddie’s across the street, which had a policy about how many kids could enter at one time. But she figured she wouldn’t have to wait for long, and she looked old enough that someone would think twice before trying to play ad hoc truant officer. She might even be mistaken for a mother or babysitter, waiting to get in line for pickup. Because Ruby being Ruby, she wouldn’t cut school to do whatever secret thing she was going to do.
Sure enough, here came Ruby, looking as furtive as all get-out. Kid had no game. She was trying so hard to look nonchalant as she walked down the street toward the bus stop. She must have checked the schedule, too, being Ruby, for the bus arrived only a minute or two after she took her post. Hell, Alanna could follow a bus. Anyone could follow a bus. The trick was not overtaking it. She meandered along, keeping back, not that Ruby would be looking for Alanna’s car. Ruby thought her sister was at home, defiant in her ongoing school boycott, although Felicia still made Alanna take Ruby to school now that her parents had returned to Cumberland.
What Felicia had actually said was “I don’t give a shit what you do, but you’re going to take your sister to school because there’s no way I can.”
Back at you, Felicia. Love you, too.
It was during the drive this morning that Alanna had figured out something was up. During the drive and before, when she had gone through Ruby’s backpack. Ruby was chattery, not at all her style. Just one inane comment after another, about music, her classmates, Alanna’s college plans. Did Alanna know that there were schools that recruited girls to row even if they had never rowed? It was all about Title IX. On and on, and blah, blah, blah. Well, lying wasn’t easy and Ruby was new at it.
Then she had said: “I won’t need a ride today. I’m going over to Daisy’s house, like the other day, and her mom will bring me home.”
That’s when Alanna knew Ruby had something on her mind that was neither benign nor banal. She went home, in part because it was too hard to kill a day on her own, but also because it was fun, walking out the door that afternoon with Felicia yelling that she was still grounded.
When she saw Ruby get on a bus headed for downtown, she thought her sister might be going to the old house. But why would she do that? Probably couldn’t even get in it now. Felicia said they would sell the house, although not for a while, and it might not get as much as it should, given— Here Felicia had paused, struggled and, to Alanna’s surprise, opted against the euphemism. “Given your father’s murder,” she’d said.
“It could have been an accident,” Alanna told her. “We don’t know what happened, right? Innocent until proven guilty?”
Felicia had just looked at her. “I’m pretty sure what happened.”
It had been tempting, then, to tell Felicia what she didn’t know about that night, how Alanna had sneaked out with baby Joey. She knew she wouldn’t have any fun with her brother along for the ride, and she had been planning on getting caught eventually. What was the point of flouting her father’s rules if her father didn’t know? The idea had been to show him that he couldn’t make her do anything—stay home, stop seeing Tony. She didn’t even like Tony that much, but once her father had gotten wind of it and told her to stop seeing him, there was no way she could stop. Especially once she knew what she knew about her father.
Fine, Dad, she had thought that Friday night before heading out. But if you want to keep someone in prison, you need to hire a few guards. She left the house not even thirty minutes after Felicia did and beat her back by only an hour or so. Sure, Joey knew everything, but it wasn’t like he could tell anyone.
But, no, Ruby wasn’t going to Bolton Hill. The number 61 meandered on, into the city proper, and Ruby got out on Fayette Street, began walking east. Unfortunately, Fayette was a one-way street heading west. Alanna tried to figure out how to make a series of ever-smaller loops, so she would stay even with Ruby as she continued east, but the lights were against her. Where would Ruby go in this part of Baltimore? Alanna passed the courthouse, City Hall, that string of sad-silly strip clubs on Baltimore Street. Bail bondsmen.
Police headquarters.
No, Alanna reasoned. What could Ruby know? She didn’t know anything. Did she? Her backpack. So that was that. She was going to show the police what she had in her backpack.
Alanna idled outside the building, trying to persuade herself that her sister had gone somewhere, anywhere else. What did Ruby know? What could Ruby know? What did Ruby think she knew? They were three different questions, in their way.
The Mercedes shot forward on Fayette, almost as if it had a mind of its own. Alanna wasn’t sure where she was going. She only knew that she couldn’t go home. She didn’t have a home. If Ruby had turned against her, she truly was alone in this world.
4:00 P.M.
They made her wait awhile. Because she was fifteen, they said. They needed permission to talk to her. Who could give it?
“My mother,” Ruby told them.
“Your stepmother?”
“My real mother. Although she doesn’t have custody. Technically, no one has custody. I don’t have a guardian. My father died without a will. But my mother is here in town. Somewhere.”
“Do you know how to get in touch with her?”
“Not really. My dad—my dad knew.”
More back-and-forth. They asked her again if she was sure she wanted to make a statement, and that’s when the confusion was finally resolved. It turned out that they thought she was here to confess. No, no, she said. She just had information that she thought she should share. Well, they could talk to her as long as she wasn’t confessing. No permission needed for that. Was she sure she wasn’t trying to confess?
“Very sure,” she said. A c
onfession would be so much easier than what she had to do.
So finally, the two detectives sat opposite her. She knew all about good cop, bad cop, but this was pretty much good cop, good cop. They asked her if she wanted a soda, and she discovered that she did. Orange. Why did she say orange? She never drank soda at all. That was one battle Felicia had won. No soda in the house, ever. Ruby’s mouth was dry. She had been psyching herself up to do this for hours, but now that the moment was here, it was like one of those dreams where you open your mouth to scream and nothing comes out.
“What do you want to tell us, Ruby?” asked the handsome one, Tull. He had a few acne scars, but they only made him more attractive, the way a flaw can, sometimes.
“You saw the paper? About the notes my mother has been getting? I told you—I know who’s been sending them.”
“Right. But it’s not you. We need to be clear on this. You haven’t been a party to these notes.”
“Is it against the law, sending notes like that?”
“Not exactly. But that’s why we made you wait. If you are here to admit to any criminal act, you need a legal representative. Because you’re under eighteen. But you are allowed to share material information with us.”
“No, I had nothing to do with it. But I know who did.”
“How?”
“Because I recognize the source. There’s a pattern.”
“A source? A pattern?”
“Yeah, I realized when I read the paper online last night.”
“You read the paper? You’re a very unusual fifteen-year-old kid.”
Shit. That did sound weird. She thought fast. “Yeah. I am. I’m the daughter of a woman who killed her youngest child and now my dad has been murdered. You’d read the paper, too, I think.”
“I probably would.” He was agreeable, kind. The other cop was trying to arrange his features into a nice, agreeable face as well, but he wasn’t as good at it. “So what did you see in the paper?”
“The notes. I know what they mean. Well, not mean, exactly. But I know who wrote them. Alanna. It has to be my sister, Alanna.”
Nothing really changed at that moment. Perhaps the handsome detective slouched a little less, but there was nothing to indicate that what she had said was significant. Yet. Ruby knew it was.
“You know that how?”
“Because I know where the lines are from. They’re from books, particular favorites of my mom’s. Alanna read them to me after our mom was gone. I have four of them with me. I couldn’t find the fifth.”
And with that, Ruby took the books from her backpack. The Lonely Doll. Curious George. Love You Forever. The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. There were Post-its affixed to the key pages. The lines, reclaimed by the books, were at once more and less sinister. Curious George was in trouble for setting off a false alarm. The angry father in Cat would resent nothing more than the damage done to his suit. She didn’t know why Alanna had sent those threatening notes to their mother. She wasn’t sure what they were meant to achieve. After all, if Alanna wanted only for their mother to stay away, she had a powerful ally in their father. But Alanna was angry at Dad, too. They had fought furiously after he grounded her, although Ruby had caught only part of that quarrel.
“Alanna has a key. To our old house. She goes there. She doesn’t think anyone knows. But I do.”
“Was she there Friday night?”
“She could have been. I don’t know. I think so, yes.”
You have to follow your conscience. I can’t tell you what to do. I know only what I must do.
Ruby looked at the old books. Curious George had been her favorite. The Lonely Doll—she understood that others found it creepy, but she never had. If you thought about it, Curious George was far creepier in the way it had glossed over the fact that the monkey was kidnapped, taken from his real parents, whoever they were, and raised by a man. What did the man in the yellow hat have to offer except for the yellow hat? How could George be happier with him? And how could someone not love the Cat in the Hat? He always cleaned up after his messes.
The truly creepy book, in Ruby’s opinion, was Love You Forever. She knew it had been written by a man whose two children were stillborn. Alanna had told her that. And their mother had told Alanna. Still—creepy. The idea of your mother crawling through your window and holding you when you were an adult. Then growing up, doing the same thing to your mother.
“Where did you find the books?”
“They’re mine.” She showed them where she had printed her name in the books in big block letters, using a purple crayon. Ruby and the purple crayon. Alanna had used blue.
“Okay, so maybe your sister wrote the notes. That’s interesting. But why do you think she was involved with this thing with your dad?”
This thing. Yeah, murder was a thing, all right. Ruby had not thought the police would make her say more, put it in words. She had hoped that all she had to do was put the books in front of them and they would do the rest.
“There were fights. Two. One Sunday, then another one Thursday night. I—I eavesdrop. I don’t know why they were fighting, only that Alanna was mad at him. She said he was a liar, that he was always trying to control everything, but he couldn’t control her.”
“What was she talking about?”
“I don’t know. She has a boyfriend. But I didn’t think our dad knew that.”
“Was Alanna in the city Friday night?”
Ruby swallowed hard. “I don’t know. I had a sleepover. But she was home, alone, with baby Joey. And she did go out.”
“How do you know that if you weren’t there?”
“When I got back the next day and everything was so crazy? Joey’s car seat was in Alanna’s car. So she definitely went out with him at some point. Nobody else noticed. I mean—so much else was going on. But I saw it in her car and then, later, it was back in Felicia’s car. When we had to go to the funeral home.” She began to cry. “Can she go to the funeral? It’s not until Sunday. Will you let her go to our dad’s funeral even if she’s under arrest for killing him?”
7:00 P.M.
The house phone rang, followed by the cell a few minutes later. Tess, who was sitting down to dinner with Carla Scout—a proper dinner, roast chicken and two vegetables, a dessert of fruit, and who cared if the chicken had been roasted by the grocery store?—tried to obey house protocol and ignore the phones. No screens at the table! She had been expecting a call from Sandy; they had been swapping voice mails about their equally futile interviews today. Brian was vile, but Sandy didn’t think he was the leak. Silas the trainer was clearly starry-eyed about his former employer. What was it about Melisandre? She really was like a sorceress when it came to men. Like Circe, Tess thought, seeing Tyner’s number on her screen.
Or Medea. Medea was a sorceress first.
“No phones at dinner, Mama,” Carla Scout reminded her. Crow had empowered Carla Scout to say such things. Encouraged her, in fact.
“It’s work, Carla Scout.” Tess walked away with her phone.
“In this house,” Carla Scout said, “we sit down when we eat.” More of Crow’s dogma.
“We try, Carla Scout. We try. But this is Mama’s work.”
Tyner had told her an hour ago about Ruby’s visit to police headquarters. Tess had joked to Crow that maybe Ruby was going to be fired, too. But Ruby wasn’t the source for the newspaper article, she was only reacting to it, offering up a piece of the puzzle. No, Ruby couldn’t prove that Alanna had written the notes, but if she had— Well, the notes had started before the time that Alanna, according to Ethan Hinerman, had found out how her father and mother had used her as a pawn. It wasn’t exactly logical to be angry at a long-missing parent for returning, but teenagers weren’t known for being logical.
Alanna for her father’s murder—that was logical. The working scenario now was that Alanna had gone downtown to see her boyfriend, become incensed when he blew her off, and then taken it into her head that it was her father’s fau
lt. She knew her father was at the old house because Felicia had told her. She drove over there, waited for her mother to leave, then went inside and confronted him. Maybe she planned it, maybe she didn’t. Maybe he put his hands on her first. The cops were in no hurry to drop the charges against Melisandre, but they did want to talk to Alanna as soon as possible.
Problem was, Alanna hadn’t come home today. She had sent a text to her stepmother, saying she was at a friend’s house, failing to specify the friend.
“Have they found her?”
“Not yet. They’ve thrown the boyfriend in a room. He’s adamant he wasn’t there Friday night. Not budging off his story no matter what they offer him. But he admitted to getting a friend to deliver one of the notes.”
“Do you think she assumed her mother would be blamed? And I still can’t figure out how she does this with a kid in a car seat. I have trouble ordering a coffee, much less having a conversation with someone when Carla Scout is around.”
“Maybe she left him in the car.”
“No one would do that, Tyner.”
“Someone might,” he said with an odd laugh. “Of course, the fact that she’s missing heightens police interest in her. Although we’re playing it as not missing, just inconsiderate.”
“How’s Melisandre handling it?”
“Pretty well, all things considered. She’s being her best self. She’s upset, but her primary focus is to get Alanna whatever help she needs. I could tell she was appalled when she realized how juvenile law has changed in her time away. There’s virtually no chance of anonymity for Alanna, not at age seventeen, not in a red ball like this. If she’s charged, she’ll be arraigned as an adult, then have to petition for juvenile standing.”
“Tyner, I know this sounds flaky, but is there any chance they, well, collaborated on this? Mother and daughter?”
“Yes,” Tyner said, his voice cold, “that does sound ‘flaky.’ Alanna hasn’t spoken to her mother for more than a decade. And she was sending her threatening notes.”
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