Mending Fences

by Sherryl Woods

  When he’d crawled into bed this morning, exhausted down to his bones, she’d nudged him back awake.

  “Don’t forget you’re picking Megan up from school today,” she reminded him. “It’s a half day, so you need to be there at noon.”

  Grady groaned. Their six-year-old was a handful on her best days. He adored her with every fiber of his being, but she could get on his last nerve quicker than anyone he knew. Then she’d crawl into his lap and give him a smile that he swore turned on the sun.

  “Why isn’t she going to the sitter’s?”

  “Because Becky’s having a root canal done. Remember, we talked about this, Grady,” she said, her tone impatient. “I offered to call your mom, but you said you wanted to spend the afternoon with Megan.”

  He had a vague recollection of the conversation. “Right. Noon. I’ll be there.”

  “And don’t take her for a burger and fries for lunch,” Kathleen warned him. “I’ve left tuna fish for both of you.”

  “Oh, goody,” he said, making a face.

  “It’s good for you.”

  He pulled her down beside him and planted a lingering kiss on her lips, then said, “Which is why Megan thinks I’m the fun parent.”

  “I can live with that,” Kathleen said. “Get some sleep, sweetie. I’ll be home by six-thirty.”

  “You work too hard.”

  “So do you, but it’s all for our future. Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” he murmured, his head already buried under the pillow.

  He woke at eleven thirty, but only because Kathleen had been wise enough to set two alarms, one beside the bed, the other across the room. They jarred him out of a sound sleep and had him cursing as he stumbled to shut off the particularly shrill alarm she’d placed out of reach.

  A half hour later he was sitting in front of the school waiting for his daughter. When she bounded down the sidewalk and saw him behind the wheel her eyes lit up.

  “Daddy, I forgot you were getting me today! Can we go for ice cream?”

  Grady grinned. Obviously he’d carried the indulgence thing a little too far. Then he thought of the tuna fish waiting at home.

  “How about pizza instead?” Kathleen hadn’t said anything about pizza, had she? So it wasn’t like he was breaking his word.

  “I love pizza!” Megan declared, her dark auburn braids bouncing. She had her mother’s creamy complexion and green eyes, but her hair was a combination of his brown and Kathleen’s red.

  Grady grinned at her. “Me, too.” When she was settled into her car seat in the back, he glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “How was school today? Did you learn anything exciting?”

  “Ricky Johnson said a bad word and the teacher gave him a time-out.”

  “Now, that is exciting,” Grady said. He decided against asking what the offending word had been. “But I was wondering more about arithmetic or spelling, something like that.”

  Megan frowned. “The teacher wrote some stuff on the board, but I already knew it.”

  “Really?”

  “I could spell cat and dog a long time ago,” she said with pride. “Mommy taught me.”

  “What about me? Have I ever taught you anything useful?”

  She giggled. “You taught me to tie my shoes and to burp.”

  Grady grinned. “Well, at least one of those is useful.”

  Megan’s smile faltered. “Mommy says ladies don’t burp.”

  “That’s true, but you have years and years before you have to worry about what a proper young lady should or shouldn’t do. But believe me, when the time comes, Mommy is the one to listen to about things like that.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can we have ice cream after we have pizza?”

  “Let’s see if you have room for it,” he said, not ruling it out.

  “I’ll have lots and lots of room,” Megan assured him.

  “Then we will definitely fill it up with ice cream,” Grady told her.

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  “You, too, niña.”

  She and her mom were his reasons for being.

  Present

  Students were spilling into the hallway. Grady had his eyes peeled for Josh Dobbs, hoping he’d recognize him after that one brief glimpse of his picture when they’d interviewed Emily Dobbs. Naomi was watching intently as well.

  Just when he was convinced that the last student was gone and they’d wasted the trip to campus, he spotted the young man. He looked more like his mother than Grady had noticed in the photo. And in a happy coincidence, he was deep in conversation with Jenny Ryan, Lauren’s roommate.

  He and Naomi exchanged a look. She nodded in unspoken understanding and stepped into the couple’s path.

  “Jenny, I’m sorry to interrupt, but could I have a word with you?” Naomi asked.

  Jenny’s attention shifted from Josh Dobbs to Naomi and her expression faltered. “Detective Lansing, is everything okay? Lauren hasn’t withdrawn the charges, has she?”

  “As far as I know, she’s sticking by her statement, but I thought we could talk about how you could make sure that doesn’t change.”

  “Sure, no problem.” She looked at Josh. “You don’t mind, do you, Josh? This is important.”

  The boy had been watching the scene in wary silence, but he nodded. “No, go ahead. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Grady watched Naomi and Jenny walk outside and head for a nearby bench in a grassy area beneath some towering royal palm trees. Josh stood staring after them.

  As Grady approached, the kid seemed to stiffen, as if sensing that Grady was with Naomi, even though they hadn’t exchanged a word in his presence.

  “Josh Dobbs?” Grady asked.

  Alarm flared in his eyes. “Yes.”

  “I’m Detective Rodriguez. Could I have a few minutes of your time?”

  The kid frowned. “You’re the same cop who came to the house to talk to my mom, aren’t you?”

  Grady nodded.

  “She told me about you.”

  “I’m sure she was filled with glowing praise,” Grady said wryly.

  Josh grinned. “Not so much, to be honest with you. Why do you want to talk to me?”

  “Because I imagine you have a very different perspective on what’s going on than your mother might have.”

  “My mom’s pretty smart. She’s around kids all the time. I think she knows how to read them.”

  “Probably so, unless they’re intent on hiding their behavior.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Was it like that with Evan Carter?”

  In an instant Josh’s open demeanor shut down and he gave Grady the same kind of defiant look his mother had. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Grady grinned at his attempt at evasiveness. “Oh, I think you do. You’re a straight-A student. Your mom bragged about that. I think you can follow my line of thinking. Does Evan Carter have a side that he doesn’t let most adults see, especially your mother or his parents?”

  The kid looked torn. Grady just waited as he struggled to decide between honesty and loyalty.

  “Look, I really don’t think I’m the one you ought to be talking to,” Josh said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Evan and I have been friends since we were kids.”

  “So you’re loyal. I get that. But loyalty should only go so far. Evan’s committed a crime. And what about Lauren? Since you obviously know Jenny, I’m sure she’s told you how tough things are for her roommate right now.”

  Josh looked even more distressed.

  Grady pressed harder. “I’ll ask you again, is Evan always the clean-cut, all-American kid that everyone thinks he is?”

  “Look, I know what you’re really asking me,” Josh admitted finally. “You want to know if I ever saw him mistreat a woman. The answer is no, not physically, anyway.”

  Grady seized on the loophole he’d left. “Verbally?”

  Josh
nodded with obvious reluctance. “But he didn’t hide that from his folks. He treated his mom the same way. My parents would have grounded me for a year if I’d said some of the stuff to my mom that Evan said to his on a regular basis.” He regarded Grady earnestly. “It’s because of his dad. Mr. Carter talks to his wife the same way, like she doesn’t have a brain in her head. It’s like she’s his personal slave or something, not a woman he’s supposed to love and respect.”

  Grady heard the disgust in the boy’s voice and thought to himself that Emily Dobbs and her ex-husband had done a good job with him.

  “And you heard Evan speak with the same disrespect to women he was seeing?” Grady asked.

  Josh nodded. “I tried to talk to him about it, but he just blew me off as if I was some kind of jerk for thinking it was wrong. I kept thinking that word would spread and women would start refusing to go out with him, but I miscalculated about the jock factor. He was a big man on campus and he knew it. A lot of girls will put up with just about anything if the guy is some big wheel.”

  “Did you ever have the sense that it went beyond verbal abuse, that he might get physically abusive behind closed doors?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Josh admitted, “but we didn’t double-date a lot. It was bad enough listening to him brag about all his conquests the morning after. To tell you the truth, that was one of the reasons we haven’t been as close for the past year. I didn’t much like being around him.”

  “You ever heard any complaints from women he’d been out with, any hints that he’d pushed too hard for sex?”

  He shook his head. “Like I said, he’s a star athlete. A lot of girls are so thrilled that he’s paying attention to them at all, they’ll just go along with whatever he wants. To be honest, I was surprised that he even asked Lauren out. She’s not a groupie. She didn’t hang all over him.”

  “Maybe that made her a challenge,” Grady suggested.

  “I suppose.” Josh met his gaze. “I feel really bad about what happened to her. She’s a nice girl. I just wish I’d warned her, you know.”

  “This isn’t your fault,” Grady assured him. He glanced toward the bench where Naomi and Jenny were still talking. “You dating Jenny?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t really know her till the other day. We have this class together, but I didn’t even know she was Lauren’s roommate till she came up to me after all this started. She got right up in my face,” he said with admiration. “She wanted to know where I stood, if I believed Lauren or if I was going to stand by Evan. She’d apparently found out we went way back.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  He hesitated for a long time, apparently struggling once again with friendship over integrity. “That I wouldn’t jump on the bandwagon to take Evan down, because I wasn’t there that night, but that I didn’t doubt Lauren’s word, either.”

  “I admire your loyalty,” Grady told him. “I just hope it’s not misplaced.”

  “Me, too,” Josh said.

  “Thanks for talking to me.” Grady handed him a card. “If you think of anything else or if you run across any of the girls Evan’s been out with who are suddenly remembering that he mistreated them the same way, let me know, okay? Or just pass along my number.”

  “I will,” Josh said.

  Grady had started to walk away, when Josh called after him.

  “Detective, did my mom mention anything to you about my sister?”

  Grady froze in place. “Such as?”

  “For a long time, she had a crush on Evan. None of us think it went any further than that, but with all that’s happened, we’re worried about her. Or at least I am. Dani did her best to keep our folks from guessing just how crazy she was about him, but I knew. I even told her to back off, but I’m not a hundred percent certain she did.”

  “You don’t think your mom has talked to her about this?”

  “About what happened to Lauren, sure, but not about whether he’d ever done anything to Dani. I think Mom’s almost scared to find out the answer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’d feel awful if Dani had gone through something like that and she hadn’t even known about it, I guess.” He gave him a rueful look. “And because she knows my dad and I would beat the crap out of Evan, if he’d ever touched Dani.”

  “I’m not the person you should be saying that to,” Grady advised him. “But, believe me, I understand the sentiment.” He wished he knew what to tell Josh. It wasn’t his place to suggest he take matters into his own hands and talk to his sister. Emily Dobbs would probably resent the hell out of him if he did. And rightfully so.

  Still, this was another indication that Dani Dobbs might be important to this case. He needed to speak to her, but her mother wasn’t going to permit that unless he had enough evidence to convince her—or a judge—that the interview was necessary. He doubted that Josh’s concern for his sister would take things to the right level of urgency.

  “Keep an eye on your sister,” he finally said. “If anything leads you to believe that something inappropriate did go on between her and Evan Carter, tell your parents or tell me.”

  “Dani won’t tell me anything,” Josh confessed. “I warned her away from him, so she’s not going to want to risk hearing I-told-you-so from me.”

  Grady grinned at the admission. “If the opportunity arises, you could make it clear that you won’t say that, no matter what.”

  Josh shook his head. “She won’t believe me. I always say I told you so when she ignores my advice and messes up.”

  “I have a couple of kid brothers, so I understand the dilemma. Still, when it’s this important, I think you could probably convince her that you’re willing to break the pattern. And it is important, Josh. You know that. If Evan did hurt her, she has to be struggling with a lot of conflicting emotions, especially with all the publicity about what he did to Lauren. She may even feel guilty for not speaking up and maybe preventing this.”

  “I know you’re right. I’ll see what I can do. Thanks, Detective.”

  “Anytime.”

  “You think the other detective is through talking to Jenny by now?”

  Grady nodded.

  “Then maybe I’ll go ask if she wants to grab some coffee. Maybe she can give me some advice about what to say to Dani. Women are an enigma, you know what I mean? Even sisters.”

  “Believe me, I do,” Grady said. He almost regretted not being able to ask the kid for a few tips on how to win over his mother, but that would be inappropriate…and pretty darn pitiful, when it came right down to it.

  There was a message from Marcie waiting when Emily got home from school that afternoon.

  “We’re set for Sanibel,” she said. “A two-bedroom suite right on the beach. It sounds heavenly. Let me know what time you think we can get away on Friday.”

  Beside Emily, Dani stood frozen. “You and Marcie are going away?”

  “The four of us are going away,” Emily said. “Marcie and Caitlyn and you and me.”

  Dani stared at her in dismay. “No way.”

  Emily frowned. “I thought you’d be pleased about getting out of the house for a couple of days.”

  “Not with them,” Dani said heatedly, dumping her books on the kitchen table and storming from the room.

  “Danielle Dobbs, get back here right this minute,” Emily shouted after her.

  In response, she heard her daughter’s footsteps thundering up the stairs, followed by the slamming of her bedroom door.

  This was not the reaction she’d been anticipating. Dani was usually eager to go anywhere at anytime. She and Caitlyn had always loved the mother-daughter trips the best. The four of them read books, played cards, pigged out and laughed till the wee hours of the morning.

  Filled with an odd sense of trepidation, Emily slowly climbed the stairs and went to her daughter’s room. She tapped on the door, then opened it without waiting for a response, grateful that she and Derek had removed the l
ocks years ago when Josh was small and Dani still an infant. Josh had accidentally locked himself in a bathroom and had screamed for a solid hour before they could get him out. The locks had come off that day. Later, when there had been grumbling about privacy, they’d turned a deaf ear to it.

  “I didn’t tell you to come in,” Dani said, regarding her with a long-suffering look.

  “I decided not to take a chance,” Emily told her, crossing the room to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. “Want to tell me why you don’t want to go away with Marcie and Caitlyn?”

  For a minute, she didn’t think Dani would answer, but Dani finally lifted her head, evidently troubled.

  “Because all they’ll want to talk about is Evan and what’s going on with him and how unfair it all is.”

  “Actually I think that’s the very last thing they’re going to want to talk about,” Emily reassured her. “The whole point of getting away is to think about something else for a few days.”

  “It won’t happen that way,” Dani insisted, her jaw set stubbornly. “You know it won’t.”

  “Okay, let’s say the subject does come up, don’t you think that as their friends we should be willing to let them vent, if they need to?”

  Dani scowled at her. “Why do you always have to be so fair?”

  She said it as if being fair were the worst sort of crime.

  Emily grinned, though she could see that Dani was in no mood for humor. “It’s a good trait,” she suggested.

  “But I don’t want to listen to them defending him,” Dani said.

  Emily’s expression sobered. “I thought you’d be one of the first to jump to Evan’s defense.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  Emily knew she needed to word her next question very carefully. If she made too big a deal about Dani’s response, she’d clam up. “Any particular reason?” she asked eventually.

  Dani stared at the floor.

  “Sweetie, is there some specific reason you don’t want to talk about Evan?”

  “I just don’t, okay?” She gave Emily a pleading look. “Can’t we just let it go at that?”