Walk a Crooked Line (Jo Larsen Book 2)

by Susan McBride

  Kelly hadn’t responded, and Jo was pretty surprised she hadn’t deleted the exchange altogether. But maybe she had banned Angel from her page, as the only remarks Jo found from her were older, like the comments on Kelly’s selfie dated the night of Trey’s party: a mirror shot of her wearing a skintight blue halter dress. That caption read: Party dress!

  Going 2 ho it up 2 nite? Angel had remarked. If u keep on this road, u will lose yourself.

  Jealous? Kelly had replied.

  No, sad 4 u that u think being a slut is the way 2 go, Angel had answered.

  Who are you? Kelly had asked.

  Friend of a friend. U need 2 listen and turn back, or u might as well jump ’cause u will be all alone, if u aren’t already.

  Jo clicked on Angel’s moniker, finding a page with a banner that had an expanded graphic of the cute cherub statue with wings that Angel used as her profile photo. There wasn’t much information visible, just a gmail address. The About section had been left blank, and Jo could find only a handful of posts from the past month, all of them inspirational quotes likely cribbed from Google Images, along the lines of Don’t change so people will like you . . . be yourself so the right people will love you and Real friends don’t fall through the cracks.

  Hmm.

  Jo would have to ask Barbara Amster and Cassie about Angel. Kelly didn’t seem familiar with her—Who are you?—and yet she’d engaged with her instead of deleting her comments. Did Kelly feel she had something to prove? Or did Angel’s remarks feed into Kelly’s lack of self-esteem? Angel hadn’t been on Facebook for long enough to have made many friends, although her comments on Kelly’s page had elicited a handful of likes.

  Harsh.

  Had this Angel gotten onto Facebook just to harass Kelly?

  Jo made herself a note to follow up. She couldn’t imagine having grown up in this age where cowards could insult you online and verbally rip you apart to make themselves feel good.

  How Jo wished she could have talked to Kelly and told her to stand strong, to not let herself get beaten down, to push back and push through. The girl had been too young to understand that being fifteen lasted mere moments in the grand scheme of things.

  All Jo could do at this point was try to make things right for Kelly, to make her life count and maybe save somebody else a world of hurt in the process.

  “Hey, Larsen. You talk to the captain yet about Eldon the Third getting rough with you last night?”

  She turned at the sound of Hank’s voice. He must have just arrived, as he had his keys in hand.

  “Sort of,” she said.

  “Sort of? You need me to go talk to him, back you up?” He started to pull open a drawer to drop his keys in. “I’ll do that before I even buy my first bag of Fritos.”

  “No!” Jo scrambled to her feet.

  “No on the Fritos? Or you don’t need me to back you up?” Hank looked confused.

  “No, as in don’t put those away,” she said, gesturing at his key ring.

  “We going somewhere?”

  “Yeah, to see Barbara Amster.”

  “Does she know we’re coming?”

  “She will when we get there.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  By 9:00 a.m., they were standing on the Amsters’ doorstep.

  This time, Kelly’s mom opened the door and let them in without preamble. She didn’t look foggy, merely exhausted.

  “I’m making coffee, if you’d like any. I won’t get through the day without it,” she said, her face drawn, dark gray circles beneath her pale eyes.

  Jo declined the offer, as did Hank.

  If Jo looked hard enough, she could see the resemblance to Kelly. Barbara had probably been as pretty once; but the years—and maybe her work—had not treated her with kid gloves. Her skin was porous and shiny, and she had deep grooves between nose and mouth, aging her beyond her years.

  Jo wondered if she’d seemed attractive to Robert Eldon four or five years ago, when she’d started caring for Mary. Or had attractiveness not even mattered when Mr. Eldon had turned to other women while his wife had been dying? Jo wouldn’t be surprised if he’d sought solace from Barbara Amster. Trey had suggested both Amsters knew about his father’s affairs. Maybe one of those affairs was with his mother’s nurse.

  “I’m glad you came,” Barbara said, fatigue in her voice. “I realize I wasn’t much help yesterday, but I was in shock. I want to know what happened, too.” Her eyes teared. “So if y’all would follow me, I’ll take you to Kelly’s room.”

  “Thank you,” Jo told her, eager to get going.

  There weren’t but five rooms in the entire house. The kitchen was to the left of the living room, and a short hallway took off to the right. Barbara Amster led them toward the latter, bypassing a bathroom with baby-blue tiles and tub, clearly from another age. Next up, Jo saw a darkened room with a tousled bed and dirty clothes on the floor, but Kelly’s mom didn’t stop there.

  Across the hallway, there was a closed door with a handmade sign in its center. The border consisted of pink and purple hearts. The printed letters looked identical to the handwriting in the suicide note and proclaimed: My Room, My Rules, Keep Out!

  Barbara paused for a moment, like she was reluctant to breach Kelly’s privacy. “I tried to give her space. I wanted her to trust me.”

  “You’re not breaking that trust,” Jo assured her. “You’re helping her now, when she can’t help herself.”

  “I guess you’re right.” The woman sighed. “It’s not like she’s got anything to hide anymore.”

  Jo thought otherwise.

  Barbara put her hand on the knob and turned. Pushing the door open, she flipped on the light and backed up so they could enter.

  Jo stepped past her into Kelly’s domain. Hank came in afterward, looking oversized and masculine amid the feminine touches: a slim bed with a bohemian quilt in shades of purple and gray, the gauzy pink canopy draped above it. A small chest of drawers sat beneath the only window. To the side of a curtained closet door was a desk made of plastic crates with a painted plank across the top.

  The walls were filled with quotes, printed with bright markers in Kelly’s identifiable handwriting, centered on large white paper:

  Be who you are, not who the world wants you to be.

  You are a strong girl, never ever forget that.

  She believed she could, and so she did.

  Jo felt a twinge in her chest, as she imagined Kelly gazing at the words every morning, pumping herself up to start the day. Even those poster-sized pep talks had not been enough. They were just words. That was all. Unless she’d believed them.

  “I know it’s not much,” Barbara Amster said, as if inferring criticism from the detectives’ silence and feeling the need to defend the small size of the room or the brown stain on the ceiling. “But Kelly rarely complained, not even after seeing some of the really big houses I worked at. ‘Mama, why do they need all that space?’ she used to ask me. ‘Don’t they get lost?’” A smile fleetingly touched upon her lips, and then it was gone.

  “I feel the same way about big houses,” Jo said, taking the opportunity to bring up something on her mind. “Like the Eldons’ place, for instance. We were there yesterday. It’s kind of ridiculously huge. But then, you’d know that, wouldn’t you?”

  Barbara gave her a puzzled look.

  “You worked for Robert Eldon a few years back,” Jo said, because she knew it for a fact. “His wife had ALS. He has two sons. One of them went to school with Kelly.”

  “Yes, of course. My God, that seems like a lifetime ago. Poor Mary was going downhill so fast and with two growing boys who needed her so badly.” Barbara paused. “But what does that have to do with Kelly’s death?”

  “Kelly was at a party at Trey Eldon’s house shortly before school started,” Jo began, giving Barbara ample opportunity to jump in with anything she knew. “She showed up alone, and some hours later, before dawn, she was deposited on your front lawn, barely co
nscious. Did you know anything about that?”

  “I didn’t realize . . . no,” she said, blinking rapidly.

  “As a parent, that’d be something I’d remember,” Hank said quietly.

  “You sure Kelly didn’t mention the party to you or anything that went on there?” Jo pressed.

  For a moment, the tired eyes panicked. “I just knew that she was going out. I didn’t realize it was to Trey’s house. So Kelly went to Trey Eldon’s party? That’s something,” she murmured. “He’s such a big football star at the high school. I didn’t figure he even paid attention to her. He mostly ignored her back when, but they were younger. I’m sure he’s changed a lot, like Kelly. She grew up so much this past summer. She got too pretty for her own good.”

  Oh, she grew up, all right, Jo mused, some of it not by her own choosing.

  She waited for more, for some acknowledgment that Barbara Amster understood that her underage daughter had been drinking with older kids, had purportedly gotten herself so drunk that she was incapacitated.

  But Kelly’s mom didn’t add a lick to the conversation. So Jo tried to drive the point home, remarking again, “Trey said your daughter got pretty drunk that night. Did Kelly tell you she passed out?”

  “No,” Barbara replied. “Would you have told your mom?”

  That would have been tough, Jo was tempted to retort, when Mama was the one who drank herself into a stupor.

  “Kelly told Cassie she woke up on the grass, with her panties on backward.” Jo figured that bit of information would be hard for Barbara Amster to overlook.

  But, again, she was dismissive. “If Kelly had been drinking, maybe she put them on wrong after she used the potty.”

  Jo looked at Hank, who wore his best stony face.

  Did Barbara Amster not want to upset the apple cart, knowing the Eldons were involved? Was that worth more to her than the truth?

  “Your daughter told Cassie she couldn’t find her purse when she woke up on your lawn.” Jo dug her heels in. “She didn’t have her key to let herself in. She thought she might have been raped—”

  “She what?” Barbara Amster said, stammering, “Y-yes, I-I remember finding Kelly on the front step early one morning, maybe the weekend before school had started. She looked like she’d been crying, but I thought that she was just mad at me because I hadn’t been home to open the door. She definitely let me have it.”

  “Did you ask where she’d been?”

  “I don’t think I did. I’m sure I thought she’d gone out with Cassie and spent the night. She did that often on weekends when I was working.”

  “She never said a word to you about being assaulted at Trey’s house, even though she mentioned it to Cassie?”

  “You figure I could have forgotten something like that?” Barbara Amster said, pale eyes narrow. “What kind of mother do you think I am?”

  Jo didn’t respond, sure that the woman wouldn’t like what she had to say.

  But Barbara apparently took Jo’s silence to heart.

  “You’re blaming me, aren’t you? I’m the mom, so it must be my fault, even if Kelly was old enough to be responsible for herself.” Her cheeks flushed. “I wish I could recall every detail of one particular night weeks ago. I guarantee you, I was tired as hell when I got home. I always am. But Kelly was so upset that I wasn’t there, and we argued. No, she did not say, ‘Hey, Mom, I got drunk at Trey Eldon’s party, and somebody dropped me off ’cause I couldn’t find my keys.’ What I remember most vividly is that she was wearing that tacky blue dress that made her look like a two-dollar whore. If she put it on to catch the eyes of the older boys, I guess it worked, then, didn’t it?”

  Hank coughed, like he’d swallowed down the wrong pipe.

  Jo stared at her, speechless.

  Did the woman even know what she was saying? Was she blaming her fifteen-year-old daughter for going to a party alone? Did she think Kelly’s outfit had encouraged an assault? And all she worried about was whether she looked like a bad mother.

  Seriously?

  If Jo could have forgotten who she was and why she was there, she would have let loose on the woman; instead, she held it in, breathing hard, her frustration like a weight on her chest.

  “Please, don’t look at me like that.” Barbara Amster dragged a sleeve across her cheeks, though Jo hadn’t seen any tears. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I tried my best with her. She shut herself off from me, from Cassie. All I wanted was for her to be who she was again.”

  “You don’t have to say anything, ma’am,” Hank said, finding his voice first. He jerked his chin at Kelly’s mom. “We’ll take it from here if you want to go make your coffee. We’ll let you know if we need you, okay?”

  Jo had more to ask Barbara, but she had to take a step back. Hank was giving her that space, and she didn’t stop him.

  “Coffee, yes. I’ll do that.” Barbara Amster nodded, biting her lip. She stood there a moment, looking past them at her daughter’s room. “I loved her,” she said softly. “I truly did, no matter what you think. None of this would have happened if she’d stuck with Cassie instead of trying to make her life feel bigger.”

  Jo gritted her teeth.

  Barbara Amster nodded to herself, pushed away from the doorframe, and left them there in her dead daughter’s room.

  When she was gone, Jo shut the door. “Lord, help me,” she said, her pulse still racing. “Cassie was right. The woman’s oblivious.”

  “Better to wear blinders than take responsibility for your own kid, especially the bad stuff.” Hank grunted. “You had that look on your face like you wanted to shake her.”

  “I did. I still do.” Jo surveyed the small bedroom. “But I don’t have time for a suspension. I’ve got work to do. Want to divvy things up?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll take the bed and the dresser drawers.”

  “Which leaves me with the desk,” he said, adding with a wince, “and the closet. Though I’m a little afraid of that, partner.”

  Jo could see what he meant. There was no door on the thing, just a curtain pushed askew. It wasn’t big, but there were clothes crammed onto hangers on two rods, one above and one below. Shoes and other detritus bulged out from beneath, like Kelly had kicked things in just to hide them and keep her room looking neat.

  “She could have stashed a library’s worth of diaries in there, and we’d never find them. Not without a machete,” he quipped.

  “C’mon, positive thoughts.”

  “Booyah,” Hank said sarcastically.

  “Look for notebooks, letters, papers, thumb drives, anywhere that she might have recorded her feelings or made notes about people or places.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He offered her a pair of latex gloves plucked from his pants pocket, and Jo tugged them on, rolling them down her fingers.

  Then she turned to the bed, pulling back the comforter and sliding her hand between the box spring and mattress. She checked inside pillowcases and peered behind the headboard, looking for anything taped to the wood. She got on hands and knees to inspect the area beneath the bed as well and ended up pulling out random sneakers and inside-out socks.

  “You got anything?” Hank asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, moving over to the dresser. “What about you?”

  She glanced across the room, seeing him remove the wooden plank from the milk crates and check both sides before he put it back in place. He started on the cubbies.

  “Girl sure kept a lot of magazines. If I needed to figure out an outfit for homecoming, I’d be in the clover,” Hank remarked, dumping a pile of Vogues and Elles on the floor. He riffled through the first one, shaking it upside down, though Jo didn’t see anything fall out beyond subscription cards.

  “Keep at it,” she said, doing the same.

  She pulled open the top dresser drawer, deciding that Kelly was fairly organized for a teenager. There were socks, underwear, and bras split by dividers. No contact paper or shelf pap
er lined the bottom. She stuck her fingers into every sock capsule, inspected each bra cup and the half dozen pairs of underwear.

  Nothing.

  Then she moved down to the next drawer, filled with T-shirts and shorts, clumsily folded. Jo went through each piece of clothing, checking pockets, and continued through the bottom two drawers until she was done. She even reached beneath the dresser, finding dust and a couple of tangled cords from the nearest wall outlet tucked out of sight.

  She finished, having uncovered nothing stranger than a horde of assorted chocolate bars stuffed into an empty tampon box and shoved into a drawer with faded jeans.

  So Kelly had a sugar fix. That seemed harmless enough, way better than turning up prescription bottles of Vicodin or codeine pilfered from her mom’s medicine cabinet.

  When she turned around, Hank was putting books and magazines back into the milk crates that made up the base of Kelly’s desk. “You done there?”

  “Yep,” he told her. “You got anything?”

  “No drugs, no booze, nothing squirreled away except a stash of sugar.”

  “If this girl had a dark side of her life, I’m not seeing it,” her partner said, filling a crate with what looked like old textbooks.

  Jo went over to help him stuff the last cubbyhole. She got on her knees and picked up a heavy dictionary and a thesaurus. “I didn’t think anyone had these anymore. Don’t they look up everything on the internet?”

  Hank took the books from her and put them away. “Hey, I got a set of hardcover encyclopedias for the girls so they can leaf through ’em. I want them to turn pages when they learn about stuff. Everybody does too much scrolling and clicking these days.”

  Jo smiled. “Good for you.”

  He handed her a notebook next, a cute pink one with white polka dots. “It’s not a diary,” he said, “but it says something about our girl Kelly.”