by Jan Coffey
“You’re not going to do this to me,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m not going to feel like I have to look over my shoulder every time I turn around.”
Léa slapped her hand on the steering wheel and turned off the engine. Getting out of the car, she walked purposefully toward the police cruiser still parked behind. The officer was talking on his radio. He lowered his window.
“I am so glad you are still here, Officer…Officer…” She looked at the name badge. Thomas Whiting. “Tom.”
As he looked at her in annoyance, she plastered a non-threatening smile on her face. “I know you’re a great driver, so I was wondering if I could ask your opinion on something…well, car related?”
“We’re here to serve and protect, ma’am.”
“Exactly.” She half turned to face the trailer. “You see, all those things in the trailer are rented, so I figure it would be safer if I pulled it into my driveway. But I can’t pull the car in head first, because I might have a problem backing out. But backing into the driveway is too hard, too. Do you think…well, could you possibly explain to me how I can do it without causing a lot of damage to everything? I don’t want to take out all of the hedge that’s encroaching on the driveway. You must be so good at doing these kinds of things. I mean, you look like an outdoorsman. You must have experience with boat trailers.”
She looked at him hopefully, and after a moment he nodded and stepped out of the cruiser. She must have touched his male ego just right, for he immediately launched into an elaborate explanation on how far to bring the car out into the street and when and how to turn the wheel as she backed up.
“Are you sure I won’t hit the house or anything?” she asked in winsome tones. “I’d hate to do any damage to anything.”
“It’s really not too difficult, Ms. Hardy.”
“Please call me Léa,” she said pleasantly.
“Right. As I said before, all you have to do is—”
“Tom, would it be too much trouble to ask you to move the car for me?” She looked at him hopefully. “Sorry, never mind I asked that. You must be so busy. It was totally wrong of me to keep you here as long as I have.”
“No, not at all.” He took Léa’s keys and, as she stood there watching, backed the trailer and car into her driveway.
Léa had used exactly the same approach years ago when she’d started as a social worker in a rundown high school in South Philadelphia. All the teachers explained how unsafe the classrooms were and told her what to expect with regard to ongoing damage to her car. Léa had managed to get to know some of the toughest kids right off the bat, and they’d ended up being her best allies. Those years had given her a very good foundation for working with difficult teenagers. This adolescent in uniform was no different.
When the officer came back out, she maintained her smile. “Thank you, Tom.”
He gave her a polite nod and handed the keys back. “Don’t mention it, ma’am…uh, Léa.”
She went and stood beside the lawnmower and waved a goodbye as the policeman drove off. She waited until the cruiser made a left at the corner.
Shaking her head, she pulled the cord of the lawnmower and listened to it roar to life.
~~~~
At the sound of the wheels on the gravel drive, Bob Slater closed the laptop. By the time he heard the sharp click of Stephanie’s shoes on the kitchen tiles, his electric wheelchair was purring through the house to meet her.
He stopped in the wide doorway to the kitchen and watched his wife’s agitated movements as she upended a large grocery bag on the counter. Something had upset her. Again.
The cut flowers in a cellophane wrapper ended up under the bread and large cans of something else landed on top of them before rolling off the counter and across the floor. She hunted through the rest of the stuff and pulled out the carton of cigarettes. Her hands were not moving fast enough. He saw her shoulders’ shaking.
“W-what’s wr-rong?”
“She’s in town.” Stephanie’s hands attacked the carton, tearing it open and scattering packs of cigarettes everywhere. “Léa is in Stonybrook.”
“Wh-who t-told you?”
“I saw her,” Stephanie snapped, lighting a cigarette before finally turning around. “And she is going around town…to the hardware store, the gas station, the grocery store. Shopping. Talking to everyone like there is not a goddamn thing wrong. Like she’s not even related to that murderer. Like she belongs here.”
She’d been crying and long streaks of mascara stained her face. Her shaking fingers never moved the cigarette more than an inch away from her lips. She took another drag.
“She killed my…my grandchildren.”
“S-Steph, T-Ted killed them. N-not Léa.”
“She is on death row. Where she belongs. She is going to fry for killing my babies.”
“N-not her. T-Ted.”
She couldn’t even hear him. Her delusions were back in full force.
“Rich said they would let me watch. I want to see her dead. I want to see the pain in her face. In her eyes.”
Bob didn’t bother to correct her anymore. She clearly wasn’t hearing him. Stephanie continued to puff away at the cigarette. She had stepped over the threshold to her other world again. The place where she confused people, places, times. But she always remembered that Marilyn and the girls were dead. Bob has seen her go there many times in the past two years, but he thought she seemed to be improving. Until now. She crushed out the cigarette in the sink.
“She’s out.” She immediately lit another cigarette. “She is walking the streets. In broad daylight. She must have escaped.”
Bob pressed the button and moved his chair near the wall.
“I…I have to…to call the police. She…she has no right to be here. The killer. The murderer.” Stephanie reached for the phone on the counter. “I’ll call Rich. He’ll take care of it.”
Without punched in the numbers. She waited, puffing on the cigarette, while one more black tear rolled down her cheek and dropped onto her stained white blouse. She kept waiting.
Bob let the line that connected the receiver to the phone jack drop down onto the kitchen floor. He moved his chair toward his wife. Everyone thought Stephanie was the one taking care of him since the stroke. But he was taking care of her, too.
They weren’t going to put his wife in any hospital just because she went off the wall every now and then.
No, Bob would always make sure Stephanie was protected and cared for. He owed her that, at least.
~~~~
Heather took out the prescription slip from her back pocket and walked into the drugstore. The pharmacist’s counter was all the way to the back. As she started that way, she spotted Chris stocking books and magazines on a rack halfway down. Quickly, she changed direction and walked up the next aisle.
There were three people sitting in the waiting area. Another woman, holding a fretting infant in her arms, was pacing a six-foot path back and forth in front of the counter. Heather saw the pharmacist, Mr. Rice, at one end talking on the phone.
Andrew Rice had been the pharmacist the last time Heather was in Stonybrook. He was the only black pharmacist she’d ever known, even in California. He knew her father, and many times, when she’d picked up a prescription for Marilyn or the girls on her way over to baby-sit, he would stop to talk to her. Not today, though. He never even took a second to look up.
“Can I help you?”
Heather’s attention turned to the clerk who was running the cash register behind the prescription counter.
“Yeah.” She laid the paper on the counter. “I want this filled.”
“Is this a first time you are filling a prescription here?”
“No, I was living here a couple of years ago. All the insurance stuff is the same.”
“We have a new computer system now, and—”
Heather dropped her insurance card and went on to recite birth date and address and phone number. “I’ll wait f
or it.”
“Oh! I am sorry, but we are so backed up that unless it’s an emergency…”
“What if I say it is?”
The girl cast a look at the pharmacist, still on the phone. “You can wait for Mr. Rice and explain it to him, if you want. Or you can have your doctor call us.”
“How long of a wait would it be if I decide to come back?” Heather asked irritated.
The girl looked at the clock on the wall. “Midafternoon, I think. There are a lot of prescriptions ahead of yours. About three? I can call you if you want. Or we even deliver, if you can wait until Monday morning.”
“Never mind. I’ll be back at three.”
Heather ignored the curious looks of the other customers and stalked out of the drugstore, avoiding Chris Webster again as she left.
Well, that was that, she thought. By three o’clock this afternoon, she’d have everything she needed. Everything she’d ever need.
~~~~
Mick called home a couple of times during the morning, but the answering machine was all that he got. Not that Heather would ever consider answering the phone if it rang. Still, he was starting to get a little apprehensive about her whereabouts.
After his last appointment at 12:30, he headed directly home. Turning onto Poplar Street, the first thing he noticed was the change in Hardys’ house. The lawn was cut. And the evergreen shrubs around the house and along the driveway had all been trimmed back.
But with the good came the ugly. As he got out of the truck, he stopped and looked at all the chipping paint and warped clapboard and missing pieces of trim. It all showed a lot more now that the house was exposed. It was kind of like getting a buzz cut at the end of the summer. The tan line was brutal.
As Mick went up his porch steps, he saw Léa dragging a blanket full of grass and hedge clippings toward the back of the carriage house.
He knew it would only be neighborly to offer her the use of lawn equipment and whatever else she wanted out of his shed. But by helping her, Mick knew that he would be getting involved. And not just in the selling of the house, but in the complication of Ted’s defense.
He didn’t know how he felt about any of that, right now.
Max bounced around him like a puppy when he walked in.
“Heather!” he called up the stairs. No answer. He held the dog for a moment as he listened. “Wait a minute, you maniac.”
He walked through the house, dumping his keys into the kitchen drawer. There was no sign of her and no note.
“Heather?” Mick went up the steps three at a time. Her bedroom was empty and in the same condition that she’d left it this morning. He stood at the top of the stairs thinking and vacantly petting the dog. As far as he knew, she had not called any of her old friends since being back. Nobody had come here, either.
As guardedly pleased as he’d been this morning to find out Heather had finally decided to get out of the house, he was worried now about where she could have gone.
He checked again to see if there were any messages left on his cell phone. There were none. He did the same with the answering machine. With exception of his own messages, there was only one other. Andrew Rice had called asking Mick to call him at the pharmacy.
By the time he was done listening to the messages, the dog was all over him, anxious to go out.
Mick looked up Andrew’s number and took the phone with him as he let Max out the back door. Standing on his back porch and watching the dog go about his business, he dialed the number. After being put on hold for a couple of minutes, he heard the pharmacist’s voice.
“Look, pal, you told me it’s okay not to start the second floor addition to your house until October. Don’t tell me you want us start tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow?” Andrew laughed. “I want it started today and finished tomorrow.”
There was a series of clicks on the line.
“Hey, can you hold the line for a minute, Mick? I have a call coming from a doctor’s office.”
“Sure thing.”
Tucking the phone in the crook of his neck, Mick descended the back steps and threw Max’s Frisbee. The dog made a flying catch by the Hardys’ property line.
Léa was walking back from behind the carriage house with an empty blanket. Mick gave her a friendly wave.
“Are you still there, Mick?”
“Yeah.” He tried to get a hold of Max’s collar, but the beast escaped and ran toward Léa.
“This place is crawling with sick people today. I better get down to business. God knows when the next call is coming.”
Léa dropped the blanket and motioned to him that she was okay with the dog. Mick watched her scratching and petting the excited animal.
“So what’s up?”
“Heather dropped off a prescription to fill this morning. And before she picks it up this afternoon, I wanted to make sure you knew about it.”
Mick’s instant relief that his daughter had not run away was immediately overshadowed by the thought that she was sick. “What’s the prescription for?”
“Some low-dose sleeping pills. It’s on your wife’s prescription slip, and it looks like she signed it. Just to be sure, I already made a call to her office in L.A. But the answering service told me she’s out for the next couple of weeks. This is a routine thing we do, Mick. You know, with all the stuff going around with teenagers. This is probably nothing, but she is still a minor and these pills do have some kick to them.”
“I appreciate that you called, Andrew. And no, I didn’t know about it.” And the whole time he’d been thinking Heather just slept too much. “Natalie was her doctor when she was in California. But I’d like to talk to Heather and her mother about it.”
“I can just hold on to it until you get back to me, if you want.”
It was a reasonable enough solution, but Mick didn’t want to erect more of a wall between them. Especially if Heather really needed these things. But sleeping pills for a fifteen year old. It just didn’t figure. He turned away from watching the playful antics going on between Max and Léa.
“Is there a way you could do a partial fill? I am trying to buy some time until I get hold of my ex-wife or take Heather to a local doctor here.”
“No problem.”
“But I don’t want Heather to know this was my suggestion.”
The man’s voice turned confident. “She won’t. We run short on drugs on occasion on Saturdays. You can call me when you want us to fill the rest of the prescription.”
Mick’s mind was already racing. It was true that Natalie couldn’t seem to find enough time in her life for their daughter, but she was by no means a negligent mother or slap-dash physician. She was strictly straight arrow.
“I appreciate the call, Andrew. I’ll let you know.”
“Like I said, no problem. By the way, I hear your next-door neighbor, Léa Hardy, is back in town. If you see her, tell her hi for me. She and I were classmates back in…I’ve got another call. Sorry, Mick. Gotta run.”
For a long minute, Mick just stared at the phone in his hand. Then he immediately dialed Natalie’s home number. The answering machine picked up. Instead of leaving a message, he tried her cell-phone. Again, the same thing.
He couldn’t operate his life like this. He and Heather had to start to talk. He dialed the number for Natalie’s mother’s house. He was almost surprised to get a live person at the other end, even if it was the housekeeper. But at least the woman knew who Mick was, and didn’t hesitate to answer his questions.
Natalie and her husband had gone on a two-week trip to one of the islands in Hawaii. No, she didn’t know what island. But he could call back later and talk to Natalie’s mother.
Mick looked tiredly about him in search of the dog as he hung up. Only a few steps away, Léa was crouched beside Max and holding him by the collar. Her gaze was on Mick.
“Nothing’s wrong!” he said a bit more sharply than he intended.
“I didn’t ask.” She let go of the dog an
d rose stiffly to her feet.
Watching her pick the blanket, he suddenly felt like shit. She was heading back toward the hedges along the driveway.
He caught up to her as she was picking up a rake. “Look, I’m sorry about snapping your head off just now. It wasn’t you.”
She put a hand to her forehead and then tilted her head from side to side. “I think it’s still attached.”
Mick was fascinated by how good she looked with twigs stuck in her hair, and dirt smudged on her already sunburned face. There were grass clippings all over the sleeveless T-shirt.
“Guess I’ll have to try harder next time.”
She smiled but never stopped working, raking the cuttings onto the blanket.
“Where would you go in this town if you were fifteen and didn’t have too many friends and just wanted to hang somewhere outside of the house?”
Mick knew why he’d asked this question of Léa. She too had been a loner. In a way, like Heather.
“The park. Probably I’d hang out by the lagoon and feed the ducks.”
Chapter 9
The seat of her pants was wet from sitting on the rain-soaked ground, but Heather was beyond caring. She glanced down at her watch again. One-thirty. Another half hour, she thought, and she’d head over to the pharmacy again. They always had things ready before they told the customers.
She stared into the empty take-out bag. There was nothing left of the order of French fries she’d picked up from the fast-food place up the hill, but the ducks didn’t seem convinced. A couple of them continued to stand a foot away from her shoes, making little complaining sounds as they stared at her with cocked heads. A half-dozen Canada geese were grazing by the edge of the lagoon. They kept an eye on her, too.
She shook a foot at the ducks, but they only trotted off a few steps and then edged back toward her.
Heather turned her thoughts to the few things she needed to do tonight. Letters. She wanted to write goodbye letters to her parents, and her grandparents. They all deserved to know why she was doing this. She also wanted to write letters to a couple of the friends she used to hang out with in ninth-grade in L.A. And then there was Chris. She hadn’t thought about writing to him until today, but she realized now she had to. She needed to explain. She crumpled the empty lunch bag and shot it at the green garbage barrel. It went in.
