Shoot from the Lip

by Leann Sweeney

  “I know my husband had a period of time when he was weak. He had a problem with... Well, you obviously don’t need me to tell you what you already know. How much money does this girl want to remain silent about my late husband’s indiscretion? Because I don’t want his memory sullied.”

  “Trust me. This isn’t about money.” I sure didn’t blame her for being upset, but she hadn’t heard the worst yet.

  “What do you want, then?” she said. “Because everyone wants something.”

  “To warn you.” I continued before she could interrupt. “As I said, I’m a private investigator, but what I didn’t say is that I specialize in adoption searches. I recently took on a case that I hoped would lead to finding a child who had either been placed in foster care or adopted out by CPS fifteen years ago. That child was Emma’s sister. Events turned tragic very quickly, however, and Emma Lopez’s life story will be on national television next month—due to a situation that has nothing to do with your late husband, by the way. But his name is certain to be mentioned, and the photo she has of her father will also be aired. She wanted you to know, wanted you to be prepared for the publicity.”

  Silence followed. A long silence. Finally I said, “Are you still there, Mrs. Wilks?”

  “Why would she do this for me? We’ve never even met.”

  “Because she’s a considerate, sensitive young woman,” I said quietly.

  “And she doesn’t want more money?”

  “More money? Now I’m confused.”

  Gloria Wilks sighed heavily. “Before Xavier was blown to bits by those contemptible terrorists, he sent me a letter, told me to take care of Emma should anything happen to him. He hated Beirut. With the violence escalating, I think he knew he’d die there.”

  “Take care of Emma how?” I’d assumed he bought the house before he left the country.

  “He told me he bought her a house and set up a trust to cover the yearly taxes and insurance, but he’d only had enough money to purchase a place in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. He wanted her to have as much as we could offer. After he died, I sent what money I could to Emma’s mother for her care. But about ten years ago, the checks stopped being cashed, so I stopped sending them.”

  “That’s about the time Emma was placed in foster care and the house was empty,” I said. “You see, Emma’s mother abandoned her and her brothers and sister.”

  A small silence this time. “Th-that would have upset Xavier very much. Maybe I should have tried harder to find out why the money was returned . . . but—”

  “You don’t need to explain. But one thing you could do now might help Emma more than anything. Maybe she could meet her half brothers.” Why I said this, I didn’t know. Guess I’m a reunion junkie.

  “B-but they don’t know about her,” Gloria Lopez said quickly.

  I’d obviously pressed her panic button. “You never told them?”

  “I foolishly thought I could keep this secret from them forever. Another mistake.”

  “They might like to meet her, too,” I said.

  “But if I tell them about Emma, that would mean they’d discover their father wasn’t quite so heroic when it came to his family. He betrayed us. I forgave him before he died, but I don’t want my sons to know what their father did. Can you understand that?”

  “Not really. They’re adults. And they’ll probably find out anyway, now that Xavier Lopez’s name and picture will be on national TV.”

  “You’re right, of course,” she said.

  “You’ll tell them, then?”

  “I have to, don’t I? Now please, if you would, tell me all about this television program and what’s happened to Emma these last ten years. I’m really not as self-serving as you probably think.”

  Later that afternoon, I decided to check on Emma, see if she needed anything. When I arrived at her suite, I was recruited to take Shannon to dance class and pick up Luke from football practice. I was glad to help.

  Thirty minutes later I returned to the hotel with a dirty adolescent who hardly fit in the front seat of my car—but since Luke had me laughing nonstop with his corny jokes, the grime wasn’t an issue.

  Their new temporary home was the Renault Hotel near the George Brown Convention Center. They had a huge suite with two bedrooms, a small kitchen and a roomy living-dining area. There were wood floors and Oriental rugs, not to mention a wet bar. Very nice, as Venture had promised.

  Luke told me on the drive to the Renault that Shannon and Emma were staying in one bedroom, and he had a big room all to himself. He even had his own shower—a first. So after we arrived, Luke kissed Emma hello, grabbed four bananas and about ten granola bars from the kitchenette and retreated to his new sanctuary. Emma told me there was a television with an Xbox in there as well, and we knew we wouldn’t be seeing him anytime soon.

  Emma smiled from her spot on the reclining sofa after he shut his door. “Thanks for doing taxi duty. I wasn’t even sure Shannon would make her class.”

  “One of the moms who saw us arrive at the dance studio said she’d bring her back here and drive her next week, if necessary. Nice lady.” I sat in the armchair alongside Emma, a cushy chair I could really sink into. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not as sore as this morning, and my shoulder only yells at me when I wiggle my hand.” Her left arm was still restrained against her body by a wide elastic contraption that also crisscrossed over her good shoulder.

  “Ouch,” I said with a sympathetic grimace. “You taking something for the pain?”

  “It doesn’t hurt that much, Abby. I feel like I had a bad fall, that’s all.”

  “If you say so. And no one from Venture has come by?”

  “They’ve called three times. Paul Kravitz phoned. He said he’d be here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Can you come?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it. We caught a break, pardon the pun, with the accident. I’ve had time to get a jump start on the investigation. DeShay Peters, my boyfriend’s partner, is already helping me with your case.”

  “What kind of help?” she asked.

  “What should have been done by someone when your mother abandoned you. We hope to find your mother.”

  Emma paled, her skin taking on that greenish color I remembered from yesterday. “Did we talk about you finding her? I was so stressed yesterday I don’t remember. I don’t want her back in our lives, Abby.”

  “You may have no choice, Emma. The police can’t forget they found those bones under your house. They have to pursue this and that means looking into her disappearance so they can ask her a few important questions.”

  “If you find her, you’ll turn her over to the police?”

  “Absolutely. If you don’t want me to follow up on this, I can leave it to HPD. But I promise you, Crime Time will be searching for her, too—probably already is. She has to be held accountable, not only for abandoning you and your brothers and sister, but for what she may have done to that baby.” Held accountable even if she’s incapacitated or dead, I thought.

  Emma rubbed her upper left arm, head bowed. “You think you can find her faster than the police or the television investigators?”

  “I don’t know about Paul Kravitz’s team, and I’ll need HPD’s help, but I’ll only be working your case, while the police will be dividing their time between who knows how many homicides? Police and PIs have to work together sometimes—not that they always like the arrangement.”

  “I-I’d rather you find her before anyone else does,” Emma said.

  “Okay. That’s settled.” For a moment I debated whether to mention my conversation with Gloria Wilks or my knowledge of Emma’s half brothers. But she was already having a hard time with the information I’d just given her. Best to wait. Instead I said, “Anything else I can get you before we move on? You hungry? Need ice for your shoulder?”

  “There is something, actually. I could use Kate’s help telling Luke and Shannon about the ... bones, because I don’t even know where to
begin.”

  “You haven’t told them?” I tried not to sound shocked. The headline in the city section of the Chronicle this morning had been, “Reality Check Gets a Reality Check.”

  “They were awfully upset about my accident. Once they knew I’d be fine, they felt free to be excited about staying in such a nice place. I didn’t want to ruin that for them.”

  “But someone else will tell them, Emma. Maybe they’ve heard already and are keeping quiet to protect your feelings.” I checked my watch. Five o’clock. Kate might be between sessions right now. “Let me call Kate, see if she can drop by here on her way home.”

  I used my cell to call her office. Sure enough, she was available. “Hi, there,” I said. “Need a favor.”

  “I will do anything but pick up corn chips for your Frito pie dinner.”

  She had her sense of humor back only three days after the split from Terry. Good progress. “After your last client, could you pay Emma, Shannon and Luke a visit? Emma needs to tell them about what happened yesterday and could use some support.”

  Kate didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Um, sure. I had dinner plans but I’ll cancel them.”

  “Dinner plans? Is it business?” The only person Kate ever went out to dinner with was Terry, me or, on occasion, another therapist.

  “No, not business, but Emma is more important. Tell her I’ll be at the hotel at seven o’clock, if that works.”

  “Seven?” I said to Emma, who nodded. “Seven it is, Kate. Guess I’ll see you tonight—unless you change your plans and have a late-night dinner?” I was probing.

  She knew it and laughed. “If I’ll be late, I’ll check in with you first, Mommy.”

  She hung up and I folded my phone closed, still wondering what she was up to.

  “Kate shouldn’t have changed her plans,” Emma said. “Now I feel guilty.”

  “Kate does what she thinks is right. I’ve learned not to argue with her, and so should you. Now, back to business. Exactly how did your mother support you when she was still around?” From what Gloria Wilks had told me during our long conversation, she couldn’t afford to send much back in the nineties before she remarried.

  “Mom cleaned houses. She advertised by posting flyers on telephone poles or trees and always got paid in cash, which I realized later was so she didn’t have to report the income. I don’t know how many times I helped her make signs and put them up. She hardly knew how to write.”

  “She have any other jobs?”

  “Drinking. Kept her real busy, too,” Emma said sourly.

  “Probably be difficult to locate any of the people she cleaned for. She have any friends?”

  “She did, but I never met any of them except the boyfriends—and they’re a blur. After the baby, well ... went away, she didn’t bring men home anymore. That doesn’t mean she didn’t have men friends. I’m sure she did, but she kept them away from us. She still binged, though. After a while I wished she’d stay gone. Finally that’s exactly what happened—and I felt as guilty as hell.”

  “Not your fault, Emma,” I said softly.

  “Intellectually, I understand that. But here?” She pointed to her heart. “Here I still feel I’m to blame for her screwed-up existence. Maybe if I’d never been born—”

  “Hold on. Kate tells me all the time how kids take on their parents’ problems, adult issues that have nothing to do with them. From what I know about alcoholics, they always promise to stop drinking, but they never promise to stop lying. And lying trumps everything.”

  Emma’s gaze met mine for the first time since we started talking about her mother. “You’re right. My mother was first and foremost a liar—she even lied to herself.”

  “You ever recall her being arrested?” I asked. “That might be a way to track her down.”

  She shook her head no. “But she could have been in jail some of those times she left for days and days. She knew how to raise all kinds of hell at home, so why not in public?”

  “The freelance housecleaning angle will be a near-impossible trail to pick up, but a check on drunk-and-disorderly arrests might be a place to start.”

  “One more thing—don’t know if it will help. She had some regular housecleaning customers over the years. Right before she disappeared, she told me she and a friend planned to save up and open their own cleaning agency. She said nobody with money stayed home anymore and they needed housekeepers. She even had a name for the new business—Happy Homes. Like my mother could create a happy home for anyone.”

  “But you don’t recall this friend’s name?”

  “Sorry, no. But if I remember right, it was a woman, someone she teamed with on the bigger cleaning jobs.”

  “I could use a snapshot of your mother in case I get a lead,” I said.

  “I threw away most of her pictures. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?”

  “Not to me. You do what you have to do to make peace with the past. You did leave a family photo with me. I’ll scan it into my computer and use Photoshop, restore some color and get her headshot from that.”

  Emma closed her eyes, sighing heavily. “This is getting so complicated. Thanks for taking me and my problems on. This isn’t exactly about finding the lost relatives of adopted people. That’s the kind of work you usually do, right?”

  “Let me explain something. Not long after my daddy died of a heart attack, and after my difficult divorce, my kind and gentle yardman was murdered on my property—while I slept away the day by my fancy swimming pool.”

  Emma’s eyes widened. “How awful.”

  “That man’s death was a huge wake-up call, made me realize I’d been a shallow, spoiled brat most of my life. I soon discovered that if I dug deep, a real human being resided inside, and that person could actually do a little bit of good for deserving people. I’m in this business for the long haul, for folks like you.” Again I was tempted to tell her that this case was about finding lost relatives—that I’d already found two of hers, but she was tired and, despite her protests to the contrary, probably in pain. It could wait.

  9

  After I drove home from Emma’s hotel, I fed the animals, nuked a frozen pizza and left the box on the kitchen counter so Kate could see I’d chosen veggie supreme over pepperoni—because she would notice. Then I undressed and slipped into one of Jeff’s shirts from the dry-cleaning pile. I needed to at least smell him if I couldn’t touch him.

  Then I went to my office to Google Happy Homes and see if Christine O‘Meara somehow managed to sober up and make her dream of opening her own cleaning agency come true. Not in this area, I learned after searching the online yellow pages. I did find companies by that name throughout the rest of the country, though, and printed the list thinking I might call up a few of the out-of-staters tomorrow during business hours. Maybe Christine O’Meara had made a new life outside Texas. Satisfied I’d put in a full day and more on the case—my gosh, was it only Tuesday?—I poured myself a glass of chardonnay, curled up on the sofa along with Diva and called Jeff.

  He answered after the phone rang a long time. “Hi, Abby,” he said.

  “You sound out of breath. You busy?” I said.

  “Can I call you back later tonight—say around eleven your time?” He was talking fast—a rare thing for him—and he sounded ... what was a good word? Stressed. Yes. Stressed.

  “Are you okay, Jeff?” I said.

  “I’m fine. Talk to you later. Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Bye.” But right before the line went dead I thought I heard a woman cry out.

  I looked at the phone for a second, as if it could clue me in on what I’d heard. The cry had been guttural, unpleasant, and might still be going on up there in Seattle. What the hell?

  I needed an escape from my own thoughts or I’d be obsessing all evening about this new mystery. I picked up the TV remote and turned on Animal Planet, but then I heard the back door open. I checked my watch. Eight. Kate hadn’t spent all that much time at—
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  “Abby? It’s me,” called a familiar but unwelcome voice that did not belong to my sister. Aunt Caroline.

  I hit the power button and dropped the remote, thinking, Great. No escape to Animal Planet possible now. I stood to greet her, knowing I’d be transported against my will to Meddlesome, Egotistical, Self-Serving Relatives Planet—somewhere most people are lucky enough to visit only during the holidays. Though deep down I loved my aunt, she had kept important secrets about our past from Kate and me—facts about our adoption. She thought this was best, but Kate and I still beg to differ.

  Aunt Caroline looked me up and down. “Are you and Kate having a pajama party to celebrate her foolishness?” Her tone was angry, her face-lift-afflicted mouth attempting—and not succeeding in—a frown. Instead, she was left fighting a ridiculous half-smile.

  “Good to see you, too, Aunt Caroline. Come in—Oh, excuse me. You already did that without even knocking.”

  “I’m in no mood for your sarcasm, Abigail. Now where is she?” She glanced past me in the direction of the front foyer and stairs, then marched across the living room, apparently ready to tear Kate out of a closet or some other hiding place.

  “She’s not here,” I called after her.

  Aunt Caroline faced me. “You’re lying. Terry told me she came here and I—”

  “She’s working,” I said firmly. But I cringed inwardly. If she’d talked to Terry, Kate had a passel of hassles coming her way.

  “Shame on you, Abigail. You’re trying to protect her from me—from me. The person who gave you girls everything when you were growing up, the person your sister should have come to for advice before she made such a stupid decision.”

  “I’m not—”

  “No more lies,” she said. “After Terry told me what she’d done, I called her office. Her receptionist told me she has left for the day, so she is not working.”

  “I’m telling you, she’s not here.” I enunciated each word, thinking Aunt Caroline must have had one too many martinis before dinner, because she seemed to be ignoring what I was saying more than usual.