Guaranteed to Bleed

by Mulhern, Julie

  My hostess proceeded to the bottom of the steps. “Jack!”

  Jack’s voice floated down the steps. “I told you to send her away.”

  “May I?” I asked her.

  She nodded.

  I joined her at the bottom of the stairs and called, “It didn’t work.”

  I heard a few words an older brother had no business uttering within hearing distance of his younger sister, then silence.

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me where she is,” I yelled up the stairs.

  “Did you lose someone?” the little girl asked.

  I nodded and swallowed an unwelcome lump. “My daughter.”

  She raised a disbelieving brow. “How do you lose a person?”

  The lump rose again. “She ran away.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jack’s sister stared at me, measured my worthiness as a mother, or maybe my bravery at attempting to cross her bridge. “What’s your name?”

  “Ellison Russell. What’s yours?”

  “Betty. I bet your daughter is fine.”

  “I hope so. I think Jack knows where she is.”

  “He won’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  Betty planted her six-year-old hands on her six-year-old hips and yelled in a voice loud enough to shake the house off its foundations, “John Wilson McCreary, Junior, get down here.”

  Jack appeared at the top of the stairs.

  At the bottom, Betty tapped her toes on the Oriental rug.

  Jack descended. “I told you, I don’t know anything.”

  Breathe in. Breathe out. “She confided in you. You knew she was running away before she did it.” He had to tell me. I had no other ideas on how to find her.

  “Maybe. But I don’t know where she went.”

  I stared at the boy on the stairs. His gaze was fixed on the risers and a flush pinked his cheeks.

  Like Betty, I planted my hands on my hips. “I don’t believe you.”

  Standing next to me, Jack’s sister nodded as if she agreed. “He lies.”

  “Shut up,” Jack snapped.

  Betty’s response to such verbal mastery was to stick out her tongue. “I can say what I want. You’re not the boss.”

  “Am too. Mom left me in charge.”

  Not since the Scopes trial had such sparkling rhetoric been on display. Like William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, the McCreary children cut to the quick of the matter. Truth versus lies. Power. Rebellion.

  Fascinating as it might be, I didn’t have time for their rhetorical wrangling. “Jack,” I pleaded, “please, tell me.”

  Behind us, the front door opened. Betty and I turned.

  “Daddy!” Betty ran toward her father.

  The flush on Jack’s cheeks faded until he looked almost chalky.

  I squared my shoulders.

  John McCreary looked at me and narrowed his eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Sixteen

  John McCreary stood just inside the front door and regarded me with a look of distaste, the same look Mother reserved for people who wore white after Labor Day.

  Betty wrapped herself around her father’s leg. She turned, smirked at her brother and mouthed, “You’re going to get it.”

  Jack clutched the banister. His gaze shifted from me to his father to the door as if he was weighing his chances for a successful escape.

  As long as I drew breath, his odds weren’t good.

  “What do you want, Ellison? Why are you here?” So rude. He sounded as if he’d like nothing better than to toss my Chanel-covered fanny out the front door.

  I didn’t like his odds of success either. I wasn’t leaving until I found out where Grace was. When Jack told me what I needed to know—then I’d be on my way.

  I shifted my gaze to the boy on the stairs and counted to ten, giving him the opportunity to explain my presence to his father. Jack wouldn’t meet my gaze and his mouth twisted as if he was sucking on his teeth. He said nothing.

  So be it. If Jack wouldn’t tell his father, I would. “Jack’s keeping a secret.”

  John’s cheeks, already flushed the same deep red shade as an American Beauty rose, took a turn for purple.

  Jack looked as if his hold on the railing was the only thing keeping him upright.

  “I wanna know the secret,” Betty insisted.

  John pulled Betty off his leg. “Sugarpuss, you go outside and play.”

  The child’s little brows drew together and her lower lip thrust forward into a quivering pout.

  “I’ll take you for an ice cream later.”

  She batted her eyelashes. “Any kind? Even Daiquiri Ice?”

  John nodded.

  “Two scoops?”

  “Sure, Betty.”

  “In a waffle cone?”

  “Anything you want, sugar.”

  Her expression cleared. “Okay, Daddy.” She stuck out her tongue at Jack, who presumably would not be getting any ice cream, and skipped out the door.

  “Jack.” I opened my hands in a pleading gesture. “Some secrets are too important to keep. You have to tell me.”

  “He does not.”

  I narrowed my eyes and redirected my gaze toward John. With his frightening expression and his skin mottled red and purple by anger, the man looked like a monster. Any man who kept me from finding Grace was a monster.

  “Dad, it’s not what you think.”

  The scowl John directed at me grew more fearsome. He lifted his arm and pointed toward the door. “It’s time you left.”

  No. Not without a truthful answer from his son. I crossed my arms and lifted my chin. “He has to tell me.”

  “He doesn’t have to tell you anything.”

  “So, if Betty was missing, you wouldn’t want the kid who knew where she was to tell you?”

  His scowl slipped—a fraction. “What?”

  I stepped toward him. “My daughter ran away and your son won’t tell me where she went.”

  “I don’t know where she went,” Jack insisted.

  I turned to face Jack. “I don’t believe you. She told you she was leaving.”

  The boy looked down at the Oriental runner covering the stairs as if the rug’s pattern held the answers to the mysteries of the universe. That or he’d developed a sudden fascination with his Jack Purcell sneakers. “Doesn’t mean she told me where she was going.”

  The clock chimed the quarter hour.

  “Please,” I begged, “if someone you loved went missing, you’d do everything possible to find them.” Including, but not limited to, threatening teenaged boys.

  Jack lifted his gaze from his shoes to the grandfather clock that marked each minute my daughter was gone. “I care about Grace.”

  Behind me, John McCreary snorted.

  Obviously something at the McCrearys’ had caused a deep rift. Maybe Amy and John knew their son was smoking pot. I didn’t give a damn what personal baggage they stuffed into their closets or what Jack smoked, I just needed help finding my daughter. “Please, Jack. You have to tell me.”

  The boy shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  John cleared his throat. “Why?”

  “Because she didn’t tell me!” Jack cried.

  “No. Not you.” John rubbed the back of his neck and glared at me. “Why did she leave?”

  “I have no idea,” I lied. No way, no how, was I telling the hulking man standing just a few feet from me that I’d had our children followed. His face was still flushed. Perspiration dewed the skin between his nose and his upper lip. Jimmie Walker might be Kid Dy-No-Mite, but it was John McCreary who looked ready to explode.

  John’s glare shifted to his son. “Did she tell you?”

  For
a half-second Jack’s gaze returned to the door. The boy bounced on his toes as if he meant to take off running. He knew something. “No.”

  “And you have no idea where she is?”

  “No! Why don’t you believe me?”

  Jack sank onto the step and lowered his head into his hands. Despite the hand-stitched needlepoint belt that looped through the waistband of his khakis, despite the trappings of wealth that surrounded him and despite the presence of his father, Jack looked lost and alone.

  The clock ticked off another minute.

  Jack lifted his head and stared at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I don’t know where she is or why she left. I’d tell you if I did.”

  Damn. I believed him. Mostly. “What exactly did she say when you talked to her?”

  Jack cut a glance toward his father and mumbled, “Shashed me to gowim.”

  What? “Pardon me?”

  “She asked me to go with them,” he blurted.

  “Why?” John asked. He asked that a lot—especially when the important question was Where?

  “Because we’re friends,” Jack muttered.

  “No.” John crossed his arms over his chest and squeezed his biceps, wrinkling his suit. “Why didn’t you go?”

  No teenager should ever wear an expression as bleak as Jack’s. “I wasn’t ready to give up on being a part of this family.”

  Grace was ready to give up on me. I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed my lips together and ignored the need to curl into a ball, wrap my arms around my knees and keen.

  The McCrearys didn’t see my pain. That or they didn’t care. They kept talking. “Seems to me you gave up a while ago.” John’s voice was as bleak as Jack’s expression.

  “Sometimes things just…happen. They’re not the way you—” Jack snorted. “Definitely not the way you planned them. They just happen.”

  Holy Mother of mystifying men, what were they talking about? Had Jack killed Bobby? Was the note a fabrication meant to send the police scurrying down the wrong rabbit hole? I opened my eyes.

  Jack removed his glasses and dashed away a tear.

  John loosed his hold on his arms and used the heel of his right hand to rub his chest.

  I found my voice. “What happened, Jack? Is this about Bobby?”

  “Lately, everything’s about Bobby.”

  “That’s enough!” John scowled at us both.

  I ignored him. Jack could have run. Teenagers ran away every day. Most of them were never found. Oh, God. While the McCrearys argued, an invisible sword had sliced me open. I crossed my arms over my stomach to keep my intestines inside. I was in danger of bleeding out on their parquet floors. I gritted my teeth. “Why did you stay?”

  “Because you can’t run from what you are.” Guilt, misery, anger—they all skittered across his face.

  Was Jack a murderer? Huddled on the steps, he didn’t look like one. Then again, murderers don’t exactly wear sandwich boards proclaiming their sins.

  “Why’d you do it, Jack?” What if he hadn’t? Open mouth, insert foot.

  He lifted his gaze to me. “Do what?”

  I swallowed. “Kill Bobby.”

  His jaw dropped. “I didn’t.”

  “Then what—”

  “Jack!” John raised a clenched fist. He even waved it. “Not another word.”

  Wearing an expression that managed both sadness and defiance, Jack turned his gaze on his father. He straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin and said, “I didn’t kill Bobby. I loved him.”

  The silence that followed possessed an eternal quality, as if none of us would ever find our voices again. Even the clock muted its infernal ticking.

  Tears streamed unchecked down Jack’s cheeks. My face, reflected in the mirror hung above the bow-front table, was whiter than a new golf ball. A sheen of sweat glistened on John’s face and he’d advanced from rubbing his chest to clutching it.

  “Daddy!” Betty barreled into the front hall. “I want my ice cream.”

  John staggered when she hit his leg. “Not now,” he croaked.

  “Why not?” She stomped her little foot.

  John’s right hand still clutched his chest. His left hung limp at his side. His color had faded to celadon green. He looked like death.

  Oh. Dear. Lord.

  I pushed past her, grabbed John’s elbow and led him to a chair. “Jack, call an ambulance.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Now! Your father’s having a heart attack.”

  I went to the hospital. What choice did I have? I loaded Jack and Betty into Henry’s Caddy and followed the ambulance to St. Mark’s.

  Jack sat mute and frozen in the front seat. I’ve spent time with more animated dead people.

  From the back, Betty babbled. “He’s going to be okay. I know he is. The doctors will take extra-special care of him.”

  That much was probably true. John sat on the hospital board.

  “You left a note for Mommy, didn’t you, Mrs. Russell?”

  “I did.”

  “Then Mommy will come and Daddy will be fine.”

  Oh, to have the faith of a six-year-old.

  We pulled into the hospital lot, I parked the car and the three of us hurried inside to the emergency room.

  The woman at the reception desk with her heavy eyebrows and pursed lips looked about as approachable as Brezhnev. She peered over the top of her glasses and waited for me to say something.

  “John McCreary was brought in.”

  “And you are?”

  “A friend of the family. These are his children.”

  She eyed us with mild interest. “Where is Mrs. McCreary?”

  “At a party,” Betty offered.

  The woman’s brows rose. They looked like caterpillars inching across her forehead.

  I leaned forward to read her nametag. “Please, Sue, how is Mr. McCreary? His children are very worried.”

  Well, maybe Jack was. Betty climbed into a chair then swung her feet into Sue’s desk. Repeatedly.

  Sue glowered.

  I leaned forward and inserted my arm in front of Betty’s legs. “Don’t do that, sweetie.”

  “Why not?”

  “It might scuff the desk,” I extemporized. The desk was well past worrying about scuff marks, but Betty annoying the woman who sat behind it was counterproductive.

  I turned my attention back to Sue. “If you’d just check on Mr. McCreary for us.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re not his wife.”

  Thank God for small favors. “These are his children.”

  “So you say.”

  “So I say.” I didn’t have time to spend the night arguing with a mulish receptionist who borrowed her manners from the politburo. My daughter was missing and I had to find her. I glared at Sue, even raised an eyebrow, daring her to continue defying me.

  She took the dare. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you until next of kin arrives.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She answered with a tight smile and lowered her gaze to the paperwork in front of her.

  “I’m afraid that won’t do.”

  She looked up from her papers with narrowed eyes. “Oh?” Not the politburo, the KGB. The woman definitely wanted to send me to a work camp in Siberia.

  “I’m Ellison Russell. My mother, Frances Walford, is the chairman of the board of this hospital. Mr. McCreary, whose status you’ve declined to share with his children, is also a board member.” I smiled at her—a crocodile smile. “Shall I call my mother? I’m sure she’d like to know how John is doing. She’ll probably even come down here and check on him in person.”

  Throwing Mother’s weight around wasn’t exactly my favorite thing to do, but it got Sue movi
ng. She stood so suddenly the papers on her desk cascaded to the floor. She ignored them. “One moment, Mrs. Walford…I mean, Mrs. Russell.” She disappeared through a swinging door.

  “Wow,” said Betty. “Is your mother scary? Is she like the chainsaw guy?”

  “The chainsaw guy?” I asked.

  Betty nodded. “In the movie Jack and his friends saw. Mom said he couldn’t go but he went anyway. I heard them talking after.”

  I’d read about that somewhere…something about a massacre in Texas. “She’s scarier.”

  Betty’s eyes grew round.

  “My mother is real.” Just tossing her name across a desk produced results in the form of a doctor.

  He strode through the swinging door, leaned across Sue’s desk, and shook my hand. “I’m Doctor Connor, the cardiologist on call tonight.” He glanced at the children. “Mr. McCreary is stable. We’re admitting him and monitoring his condition.” The doctor checked his watch. “We should have him in a room within an hour or two. I believe the snack shop is open if you’d like to wait there.”

  “Do they have ice cream?” asked Betty.

  “They do.”

  “Daiquiri ice?”

  “Maybe not that flavor, but they do have vanilla with hot fudge and nuts. If you ask, they’ll give you extra cherries.”

  Betty considered this, then shrugged. “I guess I can eat vanilla this one time.”

  “If anything changes I’ll have someone come find you.”

  “If Mrs. McCreary arrives, would you please have her sent to the snack shop?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Walford.” The doctor flushed. “I mean, Mrs. Russell.”

  Mother can be controlling and interfering and difficult but, to her credit, she did teach me how to get things done—throw her name around.

  I led Betty and Jack to the snack shop.

  Betty looked longingly at the counter with its stools that spun in place and impressive pie case. I ignored her, found a table next to the windows and collapsed into a chair.

  A waitress deposited a glass of water in front of me.

  It’s a crying shame hospitals don’t serve wine.

  “One ice cream sundae.” I nodded toward Betty.

  “Extra cherries, please.” The child smiled up at the woman with the order pad. Two dimples pierced her six-year-old cheeks.