The sooner that she told him, the better. He had easily uncovered her pitiful attempt at covering her tracks.
Her bare toes wiggled on the bed. “I followed a hunch that there was a reason for me to come to Tennessee. A feeling. Never mind, that part isn’t important to understand. I talked to Raymond’s father, John Blanchard.”
“Delia, this is a police investigation that you are screwing with. Why did you talk with him? The state police in Tennessee talked with him already.”
“Do you want me to tell you or not? Just listen and lecture me later.”
“I’m making no promises about the lecture. Talk,” he said.
“Raymond found someone to help him and it wasn’t Emma Gilbert. It was a young woman named Courtney. She was Hayley’s nanny. Lord only knows how anyone thought she’d be a good nanny, but she probably wasn’t yet addicted to heroin when Claire hired her.” She took a breath.
“And how do you know all this?”
“Because I talked to Courtney. She’s in a treatment center. She’s in bad shape, vacillating between being lucid and on the edge of a breakdown. The treatment center sounded ready to find a psychiatric setting for her. And they should,” she said. Courtney had ignited a thread of compassion in Delia that she was wasn’t sure Mike would understand. “I know the police will have to talk with her, but at least let her have one more day. Or tonight. John has become her benefactor. A friend. One last night of solace won’t get us closer to Claire, I promise you that.”
“This is not your decision. You are letting something other than the law influence you. If this is because she has a mental illness and your father had schizophrenia . . .”
His voice was urgent, reaching out to her. How had she let him get so close to her?
Was he right? Was she acting like a kid whose parents had just died, engaging in magical thinking that if only she could get something right, she’d have them back again? “Maybe you’re right; you can’t live with a schizophrenic father without bearing scars that influence everything. But this is different. Here’s the important part. Courtney told me that Raymond had purchased property and that there was a tobacco barn on it. That’s where the naughty place is. That’s where Hayley’s mother is.”
“So we need to find out the real estate records for New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts for the last year, and in particular, properties that had tobacco barns on them. It’s nearly ten o’clock! I can’t pry these records out tonight no matter how connected we all are to the Internet.”
“One of Raymond’s drop-off places was that library in West Hartford. Remember? The Lillian Tiger Library. Do you have a map in front of you? I left Ira’s road atlas at home. Won’t that kind of narrow it down if you follow a route that Raymond might have taken?”
“Delia, you don’t have to tell me how to do my job. I’m on Google Maps right now. If Raymond has a property that he thought was perfect, it likely had to do with access to the main heroin highway. He was an idiot if he thought he’d make his way into this business. He must have had no idea that major crime organizations on the East Coast are jumping all over this. Or he had a giant ego and he thought he could be the smartest guy in the business. When are you coming home?”
This last question was different, less like the detective, more like a slipstream that Delia wanted to flow into.
“I fly into Boston around three tomorrow. I leave here super early. Last-minute flights only offer terrible connections.”
“Call me in the morning. You know that Courtney committed a crime, whether she was addicted to heroin or not, whether she is mentally disabled now. She has to be arrested.”
“I know. First thing in the morning.”
“You didn’t tell me what happened that was so important that you decided to lie to your sister and Ira and fly to Tennessee,” he said.
Could she tell him about her father’s voice startling her in her sleep? “I’m not harboring police information. It wasn’t like that. I promise. I’ll tell you when I see you,” she said. And she truly wanted to see him.
CHAPTER 43
Delia might have slept during the worst hours of night, between two and four a.m. Those were the hours when the mind perseverated, running in loops of calamity. But by four thirty she was wide awake. She prayed that the powers of a hot shower would revive her for the drive to the airport.
The steam from the shower curled her hair. She hadn’t brought much in the line of toiletries, only body lotion, toothbrush, and toothpaste. The sliver of generic soap sealed in a plastic wrapper did its job. She kept the bathroom door open, not wanting to be surprised by a knife-wielding intruder, a holdover precaution from her father when they traveled as a family. Wasn’t that why she had pushed the heavy lounge chair against the door and wedged it under the door handle? Would that truly stop an intruder?
The motel room was equipped with a single serve coffeemaker. Was she doomed to be followed by the plastic version of coffeemakers? She refused the packet of powdered nondairy substance. The watery brew would hold her until she got back on the highway, past town, and stopped at a convenience store for coffee. She remembered passing a store about ten miles outside of town, the kind that opened early and closed late. The airport was an easy one hour drive.
She stepped into a clean skirt, a pair of slip-on shoes for easy driving and airport security, and a black, long-sleeved T-shirt. By seven a.m., she pulled the heavy chair away from the door, grabbed her small backpack, tossed the key next to the coffeemaker, and opened the door. Her rental car was parked right outside her door. The gray light of morning heralded hope and another link to Hayley’s family. In eight hours she’d be home, munching on whatever delectable goodie J Bird experimented with that morning.
She wasn’t the only early riser from the motel. The lights were on in number six. An older Volvo sat outside their door. True travelers hit the road early.
Delia settled into her car and decided to leave Mike another message. She knew that he’d want to know that she was leaving for the airport. The call went to voice mail. He had to be in the shower; it was the only time he didn’t answer, or the only time Delia knew about. An image unbidden by her conscious mind saw a soaped-up Mike, with water cascading over his shoulders.
“Hi, Mike. It’s Delia, and I’m just leaving my motel and heading for the airport. The place where Courtney is in treatment is called The Phoenix House in Nashville. They are going to need an immediate psych assessment for her. And they’ll want to talk with Raymond’s father, too. He was paying for Courtney’s treatment. He said his wife didn’t know anything about it. Give me a call when you get out of the shower. I mean, I just guessed that you were in the shower.”
She set the cell phone on the seat next to her and pulled out of the parking lot. She had a huge backlog of phone and text messages that she would get to later. J Bird would have already walked Baxter by now and set multiple trays of muffins cooling on the racks at the Bayside Bakery. Ira and his wife would be in their kitchen, sipping coffee before their day started. What would Tyler be up to? He would have escorted his landlord’s dog outdoors; there was no getting away from the morning needs of a dog. Would he be thinking about Delia at all or would he already be in doctor mode, assessing broken bodies, stethoscope draped around his neck? It would be time to have an honest talk with him when she returned, and she didn’t look forward to it. Hayley would be getting dressed for kindergarten, watching Erica pack her lunch, with Louie rubbing against her legs. The detective was apparently still in the shower. Was he a thirty minute shower kind of guy? She turned on the radio and set it to search for a news station.
Delia looked up from her radio, and her rearview mirror was filled with the front end of a Volvo, a tank of a car. Was this the same car from her motel? Volvos were the cars that middle-aged women and parents of teenagers chose, saying, “I feel so safe in them.” Of course they were safer in the lumbering Volvos; she guessed they were second only to a Hummer in damage inflicted on ot
her vehicles.
Someone was tailgating her, a guy with sunglasses, not a middle-aged woman at all. If he was late for work, why didn’t he pass her? The speedometer read forty miles per hour. She had been daydreaming, projecting herself into the near future of home in Portland, and missed the sign that said speed limit fifty. She was dawdling and she needed to pay attention. She accelerated to fifty, then a cavalier fifty-five.
The space between her and the car behind her opened up, but a slice of electricity rankled the back of her neck. She was several miles from town and from the convenience store, an in-between land governed by thick groves of trees and no houses. Her eyes flicked from the road in front of her to the car in her rearview mirror. She reached for her cell, looking down long enough to hit the little phone icon on her screen.
The scream of metal on metal, or metal on fiberglass, filled her ears. She was thrown forward, straining against the seat belt. The phone leapt from her hands. Just as quickly, the back of her head ricocheted against the headrest. He had rear-ended her on purpose. Either that or he was texting his sweetie. Should she keep driving until she got to the store? She looked in the mirror again and saw that he had one palm against his cheek in a look of “Oh, no.” Delia pulled over and so did the idiot behind her.
The jolt of the impact rang throughout her body with a full-out release of adrenaline. Two nights of little sleep, compounded by the shock of the crash, left her dazed. Her hands shook as she opened the door and stepped out. The sun crested the hill and morning birds ruffled through the trees. Waves of warm air already flowed over the blacktop. The man in the Volvo walking toward her held his palms out in the whoops, I’m so sorry position. He wore a jacket, which would be too hot for a day like this. Something about the way he moved was familiar, but how could it be?
She thought, I want to get back in my car now. I should get back in my car and lock the doors and call 911. But she didn’t. Not even when she detected a scent of cologne that pounded at her memory. Lack of sleep and the shock of the collision jumbled her thoughts.
“Hey, sorry about that, dude. I was texting. Let’s take a look at the damage and we can settle up with insurance,” he said. He must be on his way to work. But wasn’t that the same car from the motel?
He was in his twenties, dark hair short and combed forward, culminating in a peak in the center, a blue shirt with a collar and a little green alligator on the pocket. He took off his sunglasses. His mouth pulled into a smile but his eyes darted down the road from where they had just driven and ahead. Then he bent slightly to look at the damage, so Delia approached the rear of her car also. She leaned forward, her center of gravity pulling in front of her, and she saw his shoes. Gray New Balance running shoes with a big blue N on the side. She recognized him: the carpenter from The Phoenix House.
He grabbed her around the neck. He was thin with tight, metallic muscles.
“Delia, don’t you know you shouldn’t stop on strange country roads?” He threw her against the back of her car and pressed hard against her. She felt the beating of his heart on her back.
Her body exploded, kicking, moving any part that wasn’t gripped by his arm. “Get off me, you asshole!” If ever there was a time for profanity, it was now. Why did he know her name? Had Courtney talked to him? She smelled a spicy deodorant scent coming from him, ripe with his own sweat. This was a man who showered and put on deodorant before ramming into a woman’s car. And over all that was the cologne, dark and cloying, the color of burgundy, fists up. All of her senses came back on line.
“We want you off our backs, and I have the green light to choose how to take care of you.” He bent one knee and pressed it hard into her back, pressing most of the air out of her lungs. “You never should have talked to Courtney.” Delia felt him reach into his jacket pocket. With his elbow, he bent her head to one side with crushing power.
He paused and pressed his cheek against her neck. “I wasn’t like this before,” he whispered. Could she possibly keep him talking? Surely another car would come along this road.
His iron grip loosened minutely and Delia was sure that the universe was going to tilt in her direction again, that he would release her, jump in his car, and she’d never see him again, that the goodness in people would prevail and she would get back in her car and drive away. Her life in Portland was only inches beyond her reach. She could hear the gulls along the port on Commercial Street, taste the salt air on the back of throat.
“But that was before Ray started up such a nice business for us to take over. Little boys shouldn’t try to play with the big boys, and Ray was a little boy,” he said. He tapped the side of her neck hard with his finger and her jugular vein throbbed. “You might just like this. So many people do.” He pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket and from one eye, she saw the syringe. She vaulted into overdrive, struggling wildly, the way a cat wiggles when it is picked up against its will, twisting in all directions with the hope that one of the moves will secure her release.
“No! Help me! Don’t do this. Whoever you were before is still you,” she cried.
He pressed against her harder. “That’s a nice idea but you can’t stop business. Heroin rules us and now it’s going to rule you. Meet the king,” he said, kissing her neck, running the tip of his tongue from her ear to her collarbone. He slid the needle into her neck.
Warm syrup washed through her torso, loosening her legs, the tight muscles along her arms, and her jaw. The syrup stormed into her stomach and she felt seasick, unbalanced and ready to vomit.
His arms softened. “There you go. It won’t be so bad. I promise,” he said.
The honey of his voice covered her in warmth. The goodness in him had prevailed and everything was going to be okay. Was she falling? If she was, she was falling from a higher place, floating like a leaf. An immense weight lifted from her body and her mind. The relief was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She floated down and away from the weight of her father, J Bird, all the children marching through foster care, and the last child, Hayley.
He held her as her knees melted.
“You only get one first time. I envy you, Delia. That was a mighty hit,” he said, letting her sink to the ground. He propped her up against the back wheel. How kind of him. She turned her head and the smell of asphalt and wet grass braided into a ribbon, flapping in the air. He walked back to his car, opened the door, and reached in. The back of her head flopped against the wheel. She thought of Baxter and how the dog could sniff anyone and tell where they’d been, their mood, and what they had for breakfast. She thought of J Bird and her retro gypsy hairdo when she baked. Would her parents have liked Mike? She was sure of it.
His car door slammed. His body blocked the morning sun as he stood over her.
“It looks like you are going to need one more hit, so enjoy your moment,” he said. He bent over and pulled her away from the car, put his hands under her armpits, and dragged her to the front of her car.
Her head rolled against his shoulder. What was so familiar about him, the way he hesitated, something about his lack of attachment to earth? Of course. “You’re looking for your family too, like me,” she said. Her words sounded thick, nearly incomprehensible. Her shoes fell off as he pulled her along. She understood the world of searching for families, her own, Hayley’s. Oh, Hayley. Louie the cat would be walking her down the stairs now, ready for school.
He stopped. “What did you say?”
She smiled. “Your family, you want to find them. We all do,” she said, her words slurring.
He folded her into the driver’s seat. “They don’t want me,” he said.
This seemed incredible that his family wouldn’t want him. Yet she had seen this again and again, and it was far sadder than losing the ones who loved you. She’d have to tell J Bird how lucky they had been, how loved.
She heard a car approaching and at the same time a beautiful ringing sound pealed from under the seat. It was her phone.
“Shit!” H
e pushed her head back on the seat and injected her again. He was so close to her face. He was afraid, she could smell it pulsing off him. And then she fell through space, toppling head over heels, bumping gently into clouds until she was gone.
CHAPTER 44
Delia was hunched over the steering wheel, her forehead pressed against the black molded plastic. Had she pulled to the side of the road and fallen asleep? If so, she hadn’t done a very good job of pulling over. The front end of her car was nosed into a thicket of bushes. She turned her head toward the side window; she had to be thirty feet from the road.
“Delia, we’ve just administered Narcan. I hope to God that this syringe we found on your car seat was really heroin.”
Delia’s vision pulled back together, turning fragmented pixels into a face. Two faces. Pat from Dalton. The man behind her was a cop. What was going on?
“Did I have an accident? Wait a minute.” Delia sat up straighter. A dull pain traveled along her neck as she turned to the left. Why wasn’t she thinking more clearly? It was as if she couldn’t quite wake up. Had she hit a deer and swerved off the road? She touched her neck and flecks of dried blood stuck to her right hand. She tilted the visor down, slid the cover off the mirror, and tilted her head to look at her neck. A needle mark, and a bruise blossomed. And something extra was pulsing through her body, a wanting, a demanding visitor, hammering in her throat.
“There was a man who rear-ended my car. I got out to see the damage and when I looked he grabbed me.” Delia looked down; she didn’t have her seat belt on. She was a zealous seat belt wearer. She swung her legs out. Pain shot out and traveled up from her heels and feet. Where were her shoes? She reached down and felt one foot. It was streaked with blood; bits of asphalt and pebbles were stuck in the open grooves. The backs of her feet were raw. She had been in an accident? People often had amnesia about the actual impact and the time prior to the accident. Retrograde amnesia. Her heart thumped faster and her hands shook.
The Tiger in the House Page 23
