Home for a Spell

by Madelyn Alt

  Becky Cornwall was one of Locke’s ladies. I was sure of it.

  She saw me looking and blushed, straightening her jacket. “I got it when I was just a little older than Abbie is now. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I always have to cover it up. Gives people the wrong idea, you know?”

  Liss chuckled. “Don’t all of us girls do silly things at that age? I’m convinced these are the things that remind us of our true selves when we’ve become lost in time and duty and responsibility. They remind us of who we are when we let ourselves be free and frivolous and playful. That’s not such a bad thing as one heads into one’s crone years.”

  I laughed, too. “You know, I don’t care how old you get, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see you as a crone.”

  She pretended to be wounded by my words. “Oh dear. And I do try so hard, too.”

  Ms. Cornwall relented but only slightly. “You’re right. Now is the time for them to make mistakes if they’re going to. I just wish she’d listen a little more closely.”

  Abbie looked down at her feet. “Sorry, Mom.”

  “Never mind that now. Go on and start the car for me, would you? We’ll talk later.”

  For some parents, that might come off as a threat, but I didn’t get that vibe from Becky Cornwall at all. She waited until Abbie hit the front door before turning back to us. Tara and Evie took that hint that she wanted to talk to the grown-ups of the group and sidled away.

  “I appreciate you telling me about her being there, Miss O’Neill. Raising a teenager is hard enough these days without people keeping secrets from you because they don’t want to rock the boat. Lord knows the kids keep enough secrets on their own time. Straight talk. There’s not enough of that these days.” She hesitated a moment and then admitted, “Well, not that there ever was. If there’d been more of that with my parents back then, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up an unwed single mom at the age of seventeen. Not that I regret having her, but . . . I want more than that for Abbie.”

  I nodded. “I understand completely. But you are right, she seems to be a nice young girl. She obviously respects you. You’ve obviously done a good job of raising her, despite the wrinkles in the fabric that occur along the way.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. But when I said she can be headstrong . . . she should never have gone back to that place. The manager threatened to sue me for misrepresenting myself on the lease and lying about Abbie’s age. I know, it wasn’t the best thing to do,” she said hurriedly, frowning to demonstrate her own contrition, “but raising a daughter on one salary isn’t always easy, and . . . we needed a place to live that I could afford. I tried to explain when Locke confronted me, but he wouldn’t listen. We were living out of my car for three weeks in May—I’m afraid Abbie has never forgiven him for that. Or Miss Cooper.”

  “Miss Cooper?” I echoed.

  She nodded. “The upstairs neighbor. A teacher at the high school. I guess she recognized her and mentioned it to Locke. I don’t think she meant anything by it, but when Abbie found out, she flipped. She thought Miss Cooper had told him on purpose, because of some joke she told in class that didn’t go over too well. I don’t know, though. I have to say . . . once I found a new place for us and could breathe again, I was almost glad it happened. I don’t know why, but I never really felt safe there. Sometimes our things would move around. On our dressers. In our closets. Even when both of us were gone. It was the strangest thing. I never knew quite what to make of it . . .” Her voice trailed off, and from the way that she shrugged and then bit her lip, I knew she was embarrassed by the inherent “weakness” of her uncertainty. I wondered what she would say if she knew that, nine times out of ten, a person’s instinctive nervousness comes into play for good reason? That, like a mother’s instinct for her child’s well-being, such things are instances of intuition kicking in, and a person would be well-advised to heed the warning. “And then, when Abbie kept hearing things . . .”

  “Abbie was hearing things?” I echoed. “Where?”

  “In the bedroom. My bedroom. You see, she still gets nightmares that scare the bejesus out of her, so sometimes she’ll still to this day crawl into bed with me when she can’t stop shaking. I never minded. I mean, it’s always been the two of us, on our own, her and me against the world. I always felt like I had only borrowed time with my girl anyway. But when she kept hearing sounds . . .”

  “What kind of sounds?” Liss wanted to know.

  “Odd sounds. Clicking. A strange whirring, like the wind in the walls, whispering at us. I actually started thinking I was hearing them, too.” She shook her head self-consciously. “Funny, the way imagination spreads from person to person in the dark.”

  But was it just imagination? Or were they really hearing something . . . there, in the darkness? Whatever it was, I didn’t have the sense that it was spirit related, despite my momentary worry early on when Tyson Hollister and Locke were arguing. From what Becky Cornwall described, they could easily have been hearing something . . . mechanical. Not the heating and cooling systems. Those sounds would have been familiar, heard so often as to become nonexistent to a resident. They wouldn’t even have registered. So what was it that Abbie and her mother were hearing that had been freaking them out?

  I really wanted to ask her about the photos, but . . . no one was supposed to know. There was no way I could broach the topic with her without going against my confidentiality agreement with Tom. My lips were tied. Sealed. Whatever.

  Becky Cornwall was just leaving when I heard Tara exclaim from the back office, “What are you doing back here? You just left!”

  “I thought I’d grace you with my presence doubly, cuz. Make your day truly special.”

  Marcus! But what was he doing back here so soon?

  “You wanna make my day special, you coulda just brought me a brownie or something. I am starved. S-T-arved. They had fish sticks for lunch today. You ever had fish sticks at the high school? It’s like glue. Rolled in corn flakes. Yum, let me tell ya.”

  He laughed. “Sounds awesome. Where’s Maggie?”

  “She’s in there. Same bat counter. You know the drill.”

  “Yeah, I know the drill. Thanks, sweet stuff.”

  I waved to attract his attention as he swept back the curtain. “I thought you went to talk to Tom about the—” I mouthed the word “pics.”

  “He wasn’t there. Janeen at the station said he’s out at the apartment complex crime scene with the team.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “She just went and told you where he was?”

  “I . . . haff . . . vays.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.

  I laughed. “I’ll bet.”

  “So . . . what are the odds that you could come along with me?”

  “You’re going out there to talk to him?”

  “You got a better idea? Things always go more smoothly between the two of us when you are there to run interference.”

  On second thought, it wasn’t really a bad idea. And if I went along, I could assuage my need to know firsthand. That was so much better than rehashing the details later and risking missing something.

  I cringed as I recognized in the bent of my thoughts the same behavioral patterns that I saw in both my mom and my sister. Not to mention half of Stony Mill proper. I ought to be ashamed of myself. For all the trouble I’d given my mom and Mel for their gossip chain over the years, at that moment I realized I had somehow managed to follow suit in my own special way. I was becoming my own worst nightmare.

  Could it be? Was I really . . . a gossip-aholic?

  It might require therapy.

  Extreme therapy. Because it was too late for gene therapy.

  I checked the display of antique clocks on the far wall opposite the counter. “It’s about that time, actually,” I said. “Can you wait a few minutes while I clean up?”

  “Sure, take your time.”

  I performed my usual, end-of-the-workday tasks, but since the store would be open late tonig
ht on Liss’s watch with Tara and Evie in supporting roles, those tasks were greatly shortened. We were able to call it a day in no time. I told Liss I’d see her in the morning, waved at the girls, who were busy sorting through aging stock to get things ready for the town’s upcoming Sidewalk Days Sale, which always drew scads of people for the fun, and gathered up my things. We were on the road in no time, heading away from the river and more deeply into the south side of town.

  “I hope he’s still there,” I fretted to Marcus, “or we’re going to have to track him down.”

  “No use calling, we’re almost there.”

  We drove past the little community park Lou and I had seen Abbie and her boyfriend JJ holed up in after her escape from the closet. Just a few blocks more and Marcus was pulling into the parking lot. At first glance it appeared that every black-and-white in the county was on-site, parked one after the other in front of the office. “Thataway,” I said. Unnecessarily, but it still made Marcus smile.

  “Ya think?”

  We parked at the far end and got out, Marcus matching his pace to mine as we made our way up the sidewalk beneath the leafy canopy of the overhanging trees. The door to the office was propped wide open, the yellow and black police tape pinned back to one side, out of the way. To our right I saw a couple of officers chatting or comparing notes in the pool area.

  No Tom.

  Wordlessly Marcus jerked his head toward the office and raised his eyebrows in question. I nodded. We headed in that direction, waiting for someone to see us and, perhaps, to stop us from going farther. No one did. By the time we were to the point where we could actually see within the office itself, we had slowed to a creep. We paused on the sidewalk just outside by unspoken mutual consent. I know I, for one, was hesitant to just barge in, but I could see straight in through the open outer door and couldn’t help noticing they had the door to the utility room open. Voices filtered out to us.

  “—Johnson found it, sir. It was locked in a drawer—”

  “—knew we’d find it sooner or later. Quinn said he was instructed to return it to the victim with the rebuilt computer—”

  That could only mean the original disk drive. They’d found it. I turned to look at Marcus. With everything that he found on the thumb drive, I couldn’t help wondering what more might be found on the hard drive itself.

  “Anything else turn up that could shed some light on his past?”

  “Not yet, sir. The guy lived here in this tiny room, and it’s like he didn’t really have a life. No personal stuff besides clothing. No letters. Some bills, though his room and board seemed to be built into his job.”

  “Bank activity?”

  “Still no statements for you, sir. I expect we’ll find it all on his computer. I did find a notebook that contains a list of passwords to online accounts. You’ll probably find it there.”

  “Kind of out of character, for what we know of him, don’t you think?”

  “Guess he had the same trouble remembering all his different passwords the same way the rest of us do. It was locked away with the old hard drive.”

  Tom came into view then, his back to us. “I’m going to take this and the hard drive and get on it. I want you to continue here. Nothing goes undisturbed. And don’t let Harding in here. He’s been on my case constantly, trying to get in here. At this rate, even when it is safe to give him access to his files—assuming they’re found on the drive as expected—I’m tempted to hold off as payback for the harassment.”

  “Gotta be a law against it, heh?” his fellow officer quipped. It was the young guy . . . what was his name? He looked over Tom’s shoulder and saw us standing there. “Oh, hey. We got company.”

  Tom turned and glanced warily over his shoulder. Seeing Marcus and me there, he spoke quietly to the man before walking our way. “Hey. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

  Marcus held up the thick envelope and waved it back and forth.

  Tom’s eyebrows rose. Recovering himself, he slipped on his sunglasses to hide his responses. “You got in?” he asked, his tone cautious.

  “I got in,” Marcus confirmed. With only a little added self-satisfaction.

  “And?”

  Marcus handed over the envelope. Tom took it, unwinding the cord closure, and removing the stack of printed pictures. His brows knit together, and he let out a long, low whistle.

  “Is that what you were expecting?” Marcus asked him.

  “I don’t know what I was expecting . . . but this kind of takes the cake, doesn’t it?” He started flipping through. I kind of wished he hadn’t put his sunglasses back on, so that I could see the thoughts flickering through his eyes. When those glasses weren’t in place, his eyes revealed far more than he could ever know. Or maybe he did. Maybe that’s why he hid behind the mirrored aviators so damn often.

  He let out another low whistle.

  “Is that for the enormity of what this means to the investigation, or is that for the chickie pics?” I couldn’t help asking.

  The briefest saucy grin was my reward. And then he smothered it, covering it with his professional, all-business mask. “My entire focus right now is the investigation, Miss O’Neill. Obviously. It is my job.”

  “To serve and protect.”

  “Bet your ass.”

  I waited until he had flipped through more of them. “Marcus and I noticed something about the pictures.”

  He stopped flipping and glanced up at me, over the rim of his shades. “You looked at these?”

  No sense in denying it. He would have accused me of it anyway. Besides, I’m sure if he really thought about it, he would have known I would. “Uh-huh. All of them.”

  He sighed. “All right. Let’s have it. What did you notice?”

  “They were all taken here. At these apartments.”

  He frowned, going back to the beginning and taking a closer look. “You know . . . I think you might be right.”

  “I did tour an apartment, you know. I have no idea if the others resemble the one I walked through—though I have a good hunch that they do; all apartment complexes seem to follow their original pattern—but if so, then yes, they all look to be taken here.”

  “Hm.” He flipped some more, slowly, paying attention to detail. “And did you notice anything else?”

  I cleared my throat. “I think the ladies in the pics are all residents—current or past—of these apartments.”

  “And why do you think that?”

  “Because I met one of them today.”

  Tom and Marcus both stared at me.

  Marcus spoke first. “You didn’t tell me that!”

  I bit my lip. “It was kind of last minute, and then you came by and asked me to ride shotgun, and . . .” I lifted my shoulder in a helpless shrug.

  “Never mind that now,” Tom interrupted. “Who do you think you recognized?”

  “Her name is Becky Cornwall.”

  “Cornwall, Cornwall . . .” Tom frowned, thinking. “I know that name. Where do I know that name from?”

  “She and her daughter Abbie used to live here.” I supplied the information helpfully. “In the apartment I was looking at, actually.”

  A lightbulb seemed to go off for him. “Ah. I spoke to her today. At the high school. She’s the girl who was hiding in the closet and nearly knocked you over.”

  “The one and the same.”

  “Kids these days. I warned her about that sort of behavior, too, while I was at it. It’s not something we’re interested in pursuing. Too many irons in the fire right now. There was no damage perpetrated. Looks like stupid kid stuff to me. I hope we haven’t come to the day when kids can’t mess up a little bit anymore without being thrown into the pokey.” He tilted his head toward me. “How did you fall into meeting her mother?”

  Fall into. Ha. The same way I seemed to fall into everything these days. Unwittingly. “She came into the store to pick up Abbie.”

  “Uh-huh.” There was a pregnant pause while he waited.r />
  “Abbie was at the store with Tara and Evie,” I explained further.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The girls . . . they confronted her about her unintentional assault on me, and I think they probably convinced her in their own special coercive ways to come in to apologize to me in person.” I laughed, knowing that Tara was incapable of being anything other than her usual forceful self, which made Evie’s energies softening everything out all the more important. “So, anyway. She apologized, we all got to talking, then her mom came to pick her up, and we all got to talking some more.”

  “Talking.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You seem to do a lot of that.”

  I was not going to rise to his bait. “It’s called being personable, Tom. And caring enough to listen when people seem determined to talk.”

  “Yes, you’re very good at both of those things, Maggie.”

  It wasn’t a slam, but I wasn’t sure it was a ringing endorsement, either. Meh, whatever. I’d take it on face value for now.

  “So . . .” Tom said thoughtfully, going back to the photos. “Which one is Abbie’s mother?”

  I reached for them and sorted through them until I found one that showed the tattoo on her shoulder. “This one. This is Becky Cornwall.”

  “I’m going to ask the guys who have been interviewing the tenants to go through these and see if they can pick any out of the current crop.”

  “Good thing none of these are of Abbie herself,” I commented. “Nude or seminude photos of an underage girl, that is not cool.”

  “And certainly not out of the realm of possibility, considering his past record,” Tom admitted. “Time will tell. Or should I say, the original computer drive will?” He held up a baggie that contained the previously missing piece of equipment, an excited light in his eyes.

  I was interested, too. After what had been discovered on the thumb drive, what would be found on the original hard drive itself?

  “What do you say, Quinn?” Tom raised an eyebrow above his silvered shades. “Care to do a little more work for the hometown PD?”