The Piper

by Lynn Hightower

  Teddy was sorry. So so sorry. What had her little girl done?

  It was going to be too late for Amelia. She was definitively dead, and Olivia knew it, though she strained and hauled Amelia up and out of the tub, wincing when she lost her grip and the body thudded and hit the floor. She tried CPR. The breath of life. But Amelia’s skin was cold, her limbs heavy and unwieldy, as if they were filled with sand. There was a froth of white foam in her nostrils and mouth, and her eyes were rolled back into her head, showing white. Olivia listened for the sound of sirens, and help, aware when Teddy ran back up the stairs, aware when she stood in the hall outside the bathroom, staring.

  ‘Did you make the call?’ Olivia asked.

  Teddy shook her head. ‘I couldn’t find the phone. It wasn’t in your purse.’

  ‘No, I said it was in my briefcase, Teddy.’

  ‘I thought you said purse. Mommy, is she—’

  ‘Teddy. Go into the bedroom. Just sit on the bed and I’ll be right there.’

  ‘I can bring the phone.’

  But Olivia was remembering an old movie she and Hugh had watched. A movie where a man had murdered wife after wife, by running them a bubble bath, then creeping into the bathroom, jerking their feet to submerge them suddenly in water. There was some term for this kind of drowning, vagal inhalation? Her mind wasn’t working right, she could not get the details straight. But Teddy had not seen the movie. Teddy would not know how to do such a thing. Teddy loved Dr Amelia. Teddy was just a little girl.

  ‘No, Teddy. Don’t do that. Not yet. I want you to tell me what you meant when you said you were sorry.’

  Teddy went very still. ‘Mommy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s okay, Teddy. You need to know that no matter what happened, I love you. I’ll take care of you, always. But you need to tell me what you did.’

  ‘But aren’t you going to call an ambulance? Will I have to tell the police?’

  ‘Tell them what, Teddy?’

  ‘Tell them what happened to Dr Amelia.’ Teddy put her hands over her face. ‘I think she drowned.’

  ‘Teddy, why were you holding her feet?’ There were red marks on Amelia’s ankles. Teddy had been holding her hard.

  ‘I don’t know. He told me to.’

  Olivia felt queasy. But she had half expected this was what Teddy would say. ‘Who told you, Teddy?’

  ‘You know who, Mommy, you know, and it’s bad to say his name.’

  ‘What else did he tell you, Teddy?’

  Teddy took a step backward. ‘He tells me lots of things, Mommy. I won’t talk about it anymore.’

  Olivia felt the last hope wither. There would be no more quiet joy, no pleasure in coming home. Her dreams for the job, her pleasure in the little stone house, were nothing, out of reach, her focus must be on only one thing. Teddy. Olivia loved her so much right now, maybe more than ever before, because the love felt so sad. She did not think for one moment that Teddy had hurt Amelia, she was too little, just a baby girl. But something had happened, and she didn’t want Teddy within one mile of questions from the police. She wanted no rumors, no publicity, no locals speculating about the little girl who found the body in the tub. And clearly, Teddy needed help, counseling of some kind. Whatever Teddy had seen or not seen, done or not done, it had to be dealt with, but in private, on Olivia’s terms, as a mother who knew the dangers of letting a child get chewed raw by officialdom and the system. Teddy was already fragile, and finding Amelia’s body this way, on top of everything else, was too much for an adult, much less a little girl of eight.

  ‘Teddy, I want you to come with me.’

  But Teddy backed away. ‘Why? Where are you taking me?’

  ‘To your Aunt Charlotte’s house. It’s going to be upsetting here for a while, when the emergency people come. I want you to be safe with Charlotte, while all of that is going on.’

  Teddy grabbed Olivia around the waist, and the tears came, with hiccups and sobs. ‘Mommy, I feel so bad.’

  ‘I know you do, Teddy. I feel bad too. We’ll talk about this later. In private. Right now I only want you to discuss this with me, and a friend I’m going to introduce you to. His name is Dr Raymond, and he helped me a lot when I was a little girl. We can trust him, Teddy. He can help you too.’

  Teddy looked up. ‘Mommy? What if Aunt Charlotte won’t let us in?’

  ‘She’s family, Teddy. Of course she’ll let us in.’

  THIRTY

  Teddy was hiccuping softly when they pulled into the driveway of Charlotte’s house. The garage doors were open, and both cars were there. Charlotte was home. Olivia took a deep and steadying breath.

  ‘She wasn’t there when I got out of school,’ Teddy said softly. She had a hand on Winston’s collar, as if she were afraid to let him go.

  ‘Do you mean Dr Amelia?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘She was supposed to pick me up after school, but she didn’t come. I waited and waited.’

  ‘Did that make you mad at her?’ Olivia asked.

  Teddy gave her a puzzled look, and shook her head.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me, Teddy? How did you get home?’

  ‘I walked.’

  Olivia dug her fingernails into her palms. Waited. But Teddy seemed to have nothing else to say.

  ‘Come on, Teddy, out of the car.’ Teddy needed to be there with her, standing at the door. That would make it hard for Charlotte to turn them away.

  But Charlotte was holding the front door open as they came up the walk. Opening the screen door. Beckoning them in.

  ‘I thought I heard a car,’ Charlotte said. She was looking at them oddly, taking them in, the two of them, desolate and desperate and on her front porch.

  Olivia tried to pull Teddy through the open door, but Teddy hung back. ‘Are you sure you want me here, Aunt Charlotte?’ Teddy said.

  Charlotte winced. ‘Yes, honey, I’m sure.’ Her eyes were circled and dark, and she crouched down to give Teddy a hug and pat Winston. ‘We need a dog around this place to cheer things up and—Teddy, you’re drenched. What happened?’

  ‘Teddy, take Winston and go in the house,’ Olivia said.

  ‘The girls are in the backyard on the trampoline.’ Charlotte waited until Teddy was out of earshot. ‘I know you’re mad at me, Olivia, and I’m sorry I didn’t return your call about coming to dinner Sunday night. I’ve been thinking and – look, come on in the house and let’s talk this out. I know I treated you like hell the other day. I panicked. I just didn’t want . . . I just didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘I can’t come in right now, Charlotte.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Olivia, at least hear me out. We can—’ Charlotte paused and put a hand to her mouth. ‘Your skirt is wet and you look like hell. Something’s happened. What is it, Livie?’

  ‘I need you, Charlotte. I need you to do what I say and not ask me any questions.’

  Something in Olivia’s voice made Charlotte go very still. ‘So it’s starting up again, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just listen to me, Charlotte. Please. For Chris’s sake, if nothing else.’

  Charlotte put an arm around Olivia’s shoulders. ‘Come on in, sweetie.’

  ‘I can’t. Look. Teddy has been here, with you and the girls, all afternoon.’ Olivia held up a hand. ‘Don’t interrupt, just listen. You picked her up from school. You were late, so she started home and you picked her up at the curb right at the stop sign at the intersection of Sutherland and Westside Drive.’

  ‘Olivia, please tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Amelia’s dead. My friend from California? The PA?’

  ‘Yeah. I met her, remember – but what happened? Was she in an accident?’

  ‘She’s been visiting us and she died at the house.’

  ‘Oh my God. Another one.’ Charlotte put a hand to her mouth. ‘Did it happen in the night? Did she die in her sleep?’

  ‘It happened this afternoon. Sometime in the last hour, I think. It looks like she drowned in the tub.’
>
  ‘That’s why you’re wet? And Teddy?’

  ‘Teddy was there when it happened.’

  Charlotte reached for Olivia. Tried to give her a hug. ‘Oh my God. Poor poor baby.’

  Olivia took a step backward. For some reason it was harder not to cry when Charlotte was being nice. When it felt like they were family again, part of the same tribe. ‘Look. I have to go and deal with things. I have to call nine one one.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t called them yet? She’s still—’

  ‘I got her out of the tub. She was beyond help, I promise. The thing is, Teddy was there, in the bathroom, when it happened. I don’t want the police to know that. I don’t want her questioned and traumatized anymore than she already is.’

  ‘What is it you’re not telling me?’ Charlotte said.

  ‘I’m protecting my daughter. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘Protecting her from what?’ Charlotte said.

  ‘Honestly? Honestly, Charlotte? I have no idea. I just know that whoever it is, I’m scared.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Every single light was on in the house when Olivia pulled up, so that for a moment, she wondered if the paramedics were there ahead of her. But the driveway was empty. The front door shut tight, the back gate snug against intruders. The cottage looked so pretty, the sweep of old stone and the twist of the double chimney. The azaleas, pink and white, were beginning to lose their flowers, and the dogwood trees along the side of the drive were on the verge of shedding their leaves. Olivia was afraid to go in.

  The house was different now, she could feel it the minute she walked through the front door. It felt dense inside, as if the very air was heavy, a waking, breathing underwater feeling that made Olivia’s heart beat hard and her movements awkward and slow. She stopped in the living room, thinking there was something she needed to do. She felt thirsty and cold, and knew she was feeling the shock.

  The backpack. Teddy’s sweater. Olivia snatched them up and jammed them into the living room closet, stashing them behind a stack of pictures yet unhung. She looked carefully around the room, then started up the staircase, hesitating on the third step. She did not know why she listened. The house was very quiet now, but oddly aware.

  Olivia began to tremble. She didn’t have to go up there, not really. Did not have to go into that bathroom, and look at Amelia, lying dead on the floor. She could call for help from downstairs, here in the living room.

  Olivia looked over her shoulder at her favorite red leather chair, where Teddy had curled up and gone to sleep, Nancy Drew book in her lap, just the night before. How long ago it seemed. She thought she’d had problems then, but now. Now her life could never be the same.

  Best not to think that way. She would deal with things. She loved Teddy as much as any mother ever loved a child, and getting Teddy the help she needed would be the sole focus of her life.

  Olivia headed up the stairs. Better to look. Check and make sure that everything was okay. She had the oddest feeling that the body would not be there when she went down the hall. She imagined how she would feel if it had moved.

  But it was all just like she had left it. Water pooled on the floor, Amelia, sprawled sideways, the water in the tub lukewarm, a skin of bubble bath residue on the surface. Olivia took care not to look at Amelia’s eyes as she pushed through the bathroom door. Amelia’s bathrobe swung gently from a hook on the back. Her makeup was lined up on the counter, so much of it that Olivia almost smiled. And with the smile came a rush of tears.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Amelia,’ Olivia whispered. She crouched down close to Amelia, and touched the cold white cheek, wondering how such a thing could have happened. It did not feel real. Olivia was flooded with an enveloping disbelief, because Amelia should not be dead and would not be dead if Olivia had come home sooner, or if Amelia had stayed in LA. Olivia wanted a reprieve, a second chance, to find a way to do the day entirely over. She could save them all, Amelia and Teddy, if she could start this day again.

  Olivia took the phone out of her pocket, and grabbed for the tissue that spilled out as well, shredding it while she made the call. The routine 911 recording would catch the tremor in her voice. All she had to do now was wait. Should she go downstairs or stay up here? She felt guilt at the thought of leaving Amelia behind, but she did not want to be here anymore. Downstairs would be better, she’d have to let them in.

  Olivia was at the top of the stairs when she turned back for one last look. There had been something odd she had noticed, but her mind was so full of noise right now, it was hard to think.

  Amelia’s right hand was curled in a fist. Olivia bent over her, and peeled back the slim waxy fingers.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Sorry.’

  Amelia had a button in her hand, and Olivia held it up to the light. Not a button. A little plastic eye, from one of Teddy’s stuffed animals.

  Olivia heard sirens and flinched. They were coming now, she should have searched the bathroom more carefully before she’d made the call. She looked under the wad of towels on the floor, into the hamper, stupid, yes, but she had to be sure.

  She found it just as the flash of revolving lights hummed against the bathroom window. Eeyore, soaking wet and missing an eye, wedged in a space against the back wall, right at the bottom of the tub. Olivia ran to her bedroom, and tucked him into her dresser drawer, beneath a stack of tee shirts she never wore.

  More sirens, the crunch of tires in the driveway, voices. She ran downstairs to open the front door.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Olivia knew she should cry. The paramedics had brushed by quickly, boxy cases of equipment in their hands, but the uniformed officer named Farrell who asked her questions kept watching her out of the corner of his eye, and she knew that he was expecting tears, that he dreaded it, but that it would also reassure him that nothing odd was going on.

  They had asked her if Amelia was depressed. Despondent over things going on in her life. If she suffered from seizures, was on any kind of medication. Adult women did not drown in the tub as a matter of course.

  Farrell hadn’t liked it, that Olivia had pulled Amelia out of that tub. She’d overheard him say something to his partner about things feeling hinky, and his partner had shrugged and told him not to be an idiot. It was perfectly normal to pull someone out from under the water like that.

  That had seemed to reassure him and Olivia knew that all she needed to do was burst into tears to ease that last bit of suspicion, but somehow she felt tight inside and it simply was not possible to let go.

  Until someone on the porch said who called homicide?, and McTavish walked into the room.

  ‘Livie,’ he said. ‘I was down the street with Jamison when I heard the sirens. I just called in and they told me there was an accident – not Teddy, though, Amelia.’

  As soon as Olivia saw him, the tears were unloosed.

  McTavish crouched beside her and wrapped her in his arms. Olivia knew then that she had come home to feel safe. And though McTavish felt safe right now, the feeling wasn’t going to last. She would never be safe until Teddy was okay.

  He still had the blue shirt on. Olivia thought about the two of them, together in her office, at the same time Amelia was drowning, of Teddy by the side of the tub. She shuddered and closed her eyes.

  One of the officers tapped McTavish on the shoulder. ‘Would you like to see the scene, sir, before we take the body away?’

  ‘I’m here as a friend, Mike, but yeah, if you don’t mind.’ McTavish spoke over the top of her head. Olivia could feel the whisper of his voice in her hair.

  ‘Did you know the deceased, sir?’

  ‘I did, yeah. Just sit tight, okay, Livie? I’ll be right back.’ He squeezed her shoulders and whispered. ‘Where’s Teddy?’

  ‘With Charlotte. That’s where she goes after school, every afternoon.’ Olivia had rehearsed those words and they sounded stilted.

  ‘Right,’ McTavish said, nodding his head as if he had no memor
y of their conversation the afternoon before, when Olivia had brought him a beer as he cleaned out the grill, and vented about how weird her sister-in-law had been. How Charlotte had backed down from her promise to watch Teddy after school. He followed the officer up the steps, their footsteps heavy and loud on bare wood.

  They were gone a long time. One of the paramedics came downstairs and knelt beside her, told her his name was Art. Asking if she was okay, and would she mind if he checked her over. He was looking at her hands, the skin on her wrists and arms. Olivia held her hands up to cover her face. Go ahead and look, she thought. You won’t see any marks on me.

  ‘I’m just upset, Art, and all I really need is a tissue to blow my nose.’

  He made a note on his chart and gave her a sad little smile, but he seemed satisfied, like he’d done what he had to do. ‘I’ve got bandages, ma’am, but no tissues.’

  Olivia found a tissue caught between the cushions of the couch. She had stopped crying by the time McTavish came back downstairs. He nodded to one of the paramedics, who looked at his partner over his shoulder. There was the groan of hydraulics as someone wrestled a stretcher through the door.

  ‘They don’t want you watching, Livie, when they bring Amelia through. Let me take you upstairs to your bedroom. You can change into dry clothes and pack a few things. You won’t want to sleep here tonight.’

  ‘I’m the one who found her, McTavish, why shouldn’t I be here when they take her through?’

  ‘It’s protocol, sweetheart, so don’t fight me on it.’ There was a message in the tone of his voice, and the way that he met her eyes.

  She shrugged, and let him lead her up the stairs, past the uniforms clustered outside the bathroom, and into her bedroom where he shut the door.

  ‘Stay here until I come and get you. Make sure you change your clothes.’

  ‘I’m not worried about being wet, McTavish, and they’re almost dry anyway.’