His Right Hand

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  “So who do you think the mother was? His high school sweetheart or something?” asked Alice, revealing what I wanted to know most without me having to ask.

  “I don’t know, but do you mind if I keep this photo?” I asked. “I’ll see what I can find out about her for you, and then I’ll get back to you.”

  Alice nodded slowly. “Thank you,” she said.

  Would she thank me later, if someone in her own family ended up in prison for her father’s murder?

  I walked Alice to the door. After she left, I held the photo for a long while. Kurt would tell me I should call Detective Gore. But I wasn’t finished with my own part in this case.

  Chapter 34

  Monday evening, Kurt came home and we got ready to go out for dinner and possibly a movie—our own new version of Family Home Evening, now that Samuel was out of the house.

  But a phone call interrupted us. “I’ll turn it off,” said Kurt. But when he looked at his phone, he said, “It’s Emma Ashby,” and answered it. “I’ll be right there,” Kurt said to her. He hung up the phone and turned to me. “I have to go.”

  Bishops are like firemen. They have to be ready to deal with emergencies at any hour.

  “What is it?” I asked, as Kurt got into the truck. He turned the ignition, and I think if I hadn’t pointed out that the garage door was closed, he would have driven right through it. And I’m not sure he would have noticed.

  “Both William and Alice have disappeared this time. Emma says she thought that Alice was at the library today and that William was doing something for scouting, but they both lied to her. No one has seen them since before noon,” said Kurt.

  “Alice was here this morning,” I admitted, wishing I’d said something earlier about it. “She brought me a photo of what might be Carl’s biological daughter from before his transition.”

  Kurt’s hands gripped harder on the steering wheel. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” he asked.

  “I thought I had handled it.”

  Kurt shook his head.

  “Maybe I should come with you to the Ashbys’. I might be able to help.” I moved toward the passenger door.

  Kurt hesitated a moment, then said, “Fine.” He knew he couldn’t stop me, and he might as well be able to keep track of me.

  We drove over to the Ashby house and Kurt hurried inside. By the time I caught up, Kurt was sitting next to Emma on her couch, offering her a package of Kleenex as she wiped tears and mucus from her face. It had been almost two weeks, and she was mostly healed from the damage of our fight, with only a few spots of greenish-yellow bruising still to be seen. It hadn’t occurred to me until I saw her how embarrassed I would be to face her again.

  “How are you, Emma?” I asked.

  She glanced up at me and flinched, but in such an exaggerated way I suspected it was staged. “I didn’t know you would both come.” She looked back and forth between us, but Kurt didn’t offer an excuse.

  I felt very cold at the sight of her. To my eye, she seemed psychotically imbalanced, and I wondered what I had been thinking when I sent Alice home to Emma a few days before. “Where Kurt goes, I go,” I said.

  “Emma, please. I have the feeling you know something else you need to tell us,” Kurt said. His tone was tight, impatient. “For the sake of getting your children back.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Emma wept, leaning into Kurt’s shoulder, then pulling away as she realized I was still standing uncomfortably at his side.

  “Do they have their cell phones with them?” asked Kurt.

  “I don’t know,” said Emma miserably.

  Kurt got out his phone and called them himself. “No answer,” he said. He pointed upstairs and gestured to Emma. “Can you go look in William’s room to see if he took his diabetes kit with him?”

  Emma turned and glanced at me for a moment too long, as if she didn’t trust me. “All right,” she said pointedly to Kurt.

  When she was out of earshot, I sat back down and said to Kurt, “What do you think the chances are that she might be to blame for her children’s disappearance herself?”

  “That she’s hurt her own children?” Kurt shook his head. “Whatever she’s done with regard to Carl’s money, I don’t believe her capable of that.”

  “But if she killed Carl and they found out? Would she have felt she had to silence them?” I pressed him because of my own guilt. I wished more and more now that I had called Detective Gore and told her all I knew this morning. Somehow, I should have prevented all of this from happening.

  “I know you got upset with her before, but Linda, she’s just like you. You’re both mothers who are trying to protect your children.” He was still accepting the helpless image of Emma that she liked to present.

  Emma came down the stairs just then, holding a small fanny pack that was labeled Medical Supplies.

  “At least he has his pump on, but I can’t check it to see when he last gave himself insulin or what his blood sugar is.” She was shaking, and the pallor of her face under the bruises only increased the effect of her frailty.

  I grimaced as Kurt stood up and led her back to the couch by her hands. He sat beside her, which left me on the opposite couch.

  “Well, do you have a tracking app for their phones?”

  Emma shook her head. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t think to do anything like that. Carl did all the technical things.”

  Helpless again.

  Kurt nodded sympathetically. “Then I should call the police. The more time they have for this kind of thing, the better chance there is of finding the children unharmed.” He started to dial his phone, but Emma stopped him.

  “What if William has stolen another car?” Emma asked Kurt. “Won’t it be worse to get the police involved?”

  I didn’t believe for a second that was why she hadn’t called the police yet.

  “Is there some reason you think that’s what he’s done?” asked Kurt. “And that Alice has gone along with him?” He was still holding one of her hands in his own. Did he realize it?

  I thought about texting Detective Gore right then, but decided to wait until I was able to give her my complete attention. I didn’t want her to call me while I was here at Emma’s.

  “Alice seemed upset this past week,” said Emma. “She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. And William—well, he is still very angry.”

  “But it was Brother Rhodes he was angry with, the last time I heard,” Kurt said. “And his car is still being repaired. Is William angry at someone else? Whose car would he take? He doesn’t even have a license, and I gave him a long talk about how he needs to treat his diabetes more carefully.”

  “Alice has a license,” said Emma. “He sometimes talks her into things with him, when he’s in a mood.”

  “All the more reason to call the police,” said Kurt. He checked his phone for the time. It was a little after seven.

  “No!” Emma exclaimed, snatching Kurt’s phone away from him. Breathing heavily, she tucked it down her shirt. “I can’t let you do that.”

  Of course she couldn’t.

  Kurt looked away from her chest area and frowned. Now he was suspicious of her, too. Good.

  “If William is trying to drive a car, he’s in danger. He could already be lying in a ditch somewhere.” Kurt knew how to speak bluntly to the facts, but I shivered at the thought, and at how it seemed his mother had pushed him into that ditch. “Even if it’s Alice driving, she’s going to be distracted and worried. Those are the worst kind of circumstances for a teen accident.”

  “Promise me you won’t call the police,” Emma insisted, her hand clapped tightly to her chest. “Just promise me.”

  “All right,” said Kurt, after a long sigh. “I promise I won’t call the police.”

  It was one of his easy false promises. I knew the tone. Kurt had
learned with our children that there were times when you lied because you had to. You did the best you could to make it sound genuine, and you told yourself it was in the best interest of your kids. Like the time when Samuel had made Kurt promise that he wouldn’t let the doctors intubate him at the hospital when he was very ill. Kurt had promised, then held Samuel down. It had been months before Samuel trusted his father again. But it was what had to be done.

  Emma tugged the phone out of her blouse and handed it to Kurt.

  He held it gingerly, as if it had been infected with something, then wiped it on his legs. He looked up at me then, and by his pleading, worried eyes, I could tell he wanted me to make an excuse to leave and call the police. So did I. But I also wanted to hear what Emma had to say.

  “William sent me a text this afternoon,” Emma confessed suddenly with a new sob.

  And she had held this back from us all this time? Purely to get sympathy from Kurt?

  “What did it say?” asked Kurt.

  In answer, Emma handed her own phone over to Kurt. He read it aloud for my sake.

  “Mom, Alice and I aren’t coming home until you let us see Cristal. You know who she is, and you must know where she is and how we can contact her.”

  So that was what this was about. No wonder Emma didn’t want us to call the police.

  I wanted to shake both William and Alice for further complicating the situation, but I could also see how they would have to do something extreme to get their mother to listen to them.

  “Who is Cristal?” Kurt asked.

  “She is Carl’s love child. From before we married,” said Emma faintly. Her lips were barely moving, as if she could hardly make them form those horrible words.

  “How long have you known?” asked Kurt.

  “About a year,” Emma said, her voice strained. Well, that certainly would have triggered a reaction in their marriage. Was that the moment the snowball had begun to roll, gaining momentum through the year and ending with Carl’s murder?

  “How did you find out about her?” Kurt asked.

  Emma put a hand to her throat, humiliated and distressed. “I found a letter she sent to Carl.”

  I wondered if Emma had always gone through her husband’s mail—and other personal effects. How had she missed the truth about him being transgender? Or was that, too, a pretense?

  “Did they meet?” asked Kurt. “This Cristal and Carl?”

  Emma shook her head and looked away. “He never told me. I don’t think so.”

  “Do you have her address or phone number?”

  Emma shook her head.

  “Do you know if she’s a member of the church, or where she lives? With her full name, we might be able to find her that way,” said Kurt. He had stood up so he was silhouetted by the sunlight from the window behind him, making his expression very difficult to read.

  Emma shook her head again. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about her.”

  “Have you texted William back?”

  “Of course, I did that right away. I told him to come home. And then I begged him. I told him I would give him anything. But even if I had this Cristal’s contact information, I wouldn’t give that to him. She’d be poison to him, can’t he see that?” She seemed desperate for Kurt’s agreement.

  “If we get the police involved, they could trace the text and find out where it was coming from,” Kurt said. “Ask for records from the cellular service provider about pings to towers and such.”

  “No,” said Emma again, this time breathlessly, as if she were about to collapse. “No police.”

  “You could call the service provider yourself then. You could explain the situation, that your children could be in danger, and that you need them to give you whatever information they have.”

  Emma shook her head. “I couldn’t do that. I don’t want to talk to anyone else about this. And who knows what information the phone people might put out in public? It could show up on William’s record when he applies to colleges.”

  It was a thin excuse, but all of Emma’s words seemed thin to me now.

  “Have you tried contacting Alice separately?” Kurt asked.

  “No. She’s clearly not in charge,” said Emma, holding the phone closely and seeming to shrink down into the couch. “She’s just doing whatever William tells her to do. That’s the way it has always been between them.”

  I didn’t see Alice that way at all. Did Emma think that was the only way to be a woman?

  “I’ll tell William to come to my house and make sure he gets what he wants,” said Kurt, as he typed the words into his own phone.

  “But I don’t want—”

  “If this is the only way to get your children back safely, are you going to stop me?” Kurt hit send and I could see wariness in all of his actions.

  After a minute, there was the sound of an incoming text from Kurt’s phone, and he nodded to me. He showed me the message from William, agreeing to the meeting in two hours’ time.

  While still in the driveway, I finally texted Detective Gore. I waited for a response for several minutes, but there was nothing. I made sure she had the information about where we were meeting and when. I hoped Emma would be forced to confess. If she did it in front of Gore, that would end this whole thing.

  “I guess I’ll just have to hope she shows up eventually,” I said.

  Then Kurt pulled out, but instead of heading home immediately, he said, “If we want to know about Cristal at this point, I think her father is the best resource.”

  “Grant,” I breathed. “Of course.” Grant Rhodes hadn’t admitted to contact with his daughter, but it wouldn’t be the first time he had been less than fully transparent.

  Chapter 35

  In front of Grant Rhodes’s house, Kurt decided it would be best for him to stay in the truck, after what had happened at the church and the legal issues still to be dealt with there. But he gave me a thirty-minute deadline before he came in to “rescue” me. We needed to be home when Alice and William got there, not to mention Emma and Detective Gore.

  “Say a prayer. A quick one,” I told Kurt and gave him a kiss. I closed the door, then walked briskly to the porch and rang the bell. Lights were already on inside, and eventually, Grant came to the door.

  “What do you want now?” he asked. He looked a lot worse than when I’d last seen him, one eye nearly swollen shut and his words slurring. It struck me then that Kurt and I were causing quite the little circle of pain in our ward.

  “William and Alice Ashby have run away and are demanding to see Cristal before they come home. I came to see if you know any of her contact information,” I said, not mincing words.

  His reaction to the name “Cristal” was immediate. He tensed and his eyes gleamed. He looked out, saw Kurt in the truck, and motioned me inside. He closed the door behind him and sat gingerly on his couch.

  “Did Cristal ever ask to see her siblings that you know of?” I asked.

  “She might have,” said Grant, admitting tacitly that he had had contact with her.

  “I’m guessing Carl refused,” I said.

  Grant didn’t contradict me. He just shrugged.

  “Then here is a chance for you to give her what she’s asked for,” I said. “Alice and William are refusing to come home until they meet her, and while I think they’re acting like idiots, I also think they deserve to have more truth about their father than they have been given so far.”

  “What’s in it for Cristal?” asked Grant. Of course, he would be thinking more about her than about Carl’s adopted children from his marriage with Emma. He’d already shown how little he cared for William.

  I smiled and tried to sound like a parent speaking to another knowing parent. “Surely she would want to hear memories of her biological mother—er, her other biological father, that is. She must be hur
ting, too, if she knows he’s gone.” I waited and Grant didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to let on how afraid I was that he was going to deny my request. He had all the power here and I had none.

  He was silent for a long time. Then he said cautiously, “Cristal only met Carl a couple of times. There were tensions between them.”

  I was surprised by this. Why? Had Carl been as hard on her as he had been on Emma?

  Grant put his hands together, almost as if he were praying. “The adoptive parents sent Carl letters and photos every year at an anonymous P.O. box. But it stopped when Cristal was about eleven because Carl asked not to be contacted again. He was afraid of what would happen if Cristal learned about his transition.

  “So when Cristal turned eighteen some years ago, I was the only contact she had, and I asked Carl to meet with her.” Grant took a deep breath, then unfolded his arms and rubbed his hands on his pants.

  I did some math in my head and figured that if Cristal had been eleven years old when Carl had adopted William, she must be about twenty-five or twenty-six now. That fit with the photo I’d seen.

  “It took several years for me to convince Carl. But when Cristal came back into our lives at last, it brought us closer again. For one thing, she asked to talk to Carl’s parents. Carla Thompson’s parents, that is. Carl tried to talk her out of it, but she was so insistent, and she was so beautiful and so winning that I think he believed she might be able to fix things between them, even after all this time.”