Whatever Doesn't Kill You (An Emma Howe and Billie August Mystery Book 2)

by Gillian Roberts

  “Not necessarily. I’ve read about cases where older kids are taken and then, more or less brainwashed. Told their parents died, or didn’t want them. They get confused, forget, buy into the fiction.”

  “Are you discouraging me or encouraging me to widen the search?”

  His voice had no levity. “Discouraging. Emphatically. This way lies nothing good. Humiliation, maybe. Legal action. Wasted time. You pick. It’s all bad.”

  She shrugged. She could feel the rows of children’s faces behind her. Didn’t George feel their glances, too?

  “Isn’t this what you’ve said an investigator should not do? Getting personally involved? Isn’t that what you told me that new girl of yours—that—”

  “Billie.”

  “Right, wasn’t that a problem with her? Didn’t we sit here over dinner the other night while you said how idiotic her behavior was in something or other, because she got personally involved?” He folded his hands over his chest, waiting.

  “I am impressed with how much and well you listen, George. That is a rare talent in men.”

  “Complimenting me? I can tell you’re having a breakdown. But tell me this: how can you say one thing, loudly, insistently, absolutely, all these years and now, suddenly, justify this wild-goose chase?”

  “I like the truth. I believe in the truth. I want the truth. That’s what this is about.”

  He shook his head. “This is about getting in over your head and my question remains: Why aren’t you practicing what you preach?”

  She put her hands up by her shoulders, palms up in a classic giving-up pose. “I guess…what I preached all those years was wrong.”

  His mouth opened and then he clamped it shut. “Wrong? You said you were wrong? Know what? Before, I was joking. Now I’m serious: You are not Emma Howe. You are an alien impersonating the woman I love, but you’ve given yourself away with that last sentence.”

  There was that, about George. He could be a pain, but he listened, and he made her laugh.

  “Idiot,” she said, waving him out of the lilac room. He could call it insanity or alien possession or whatever he wanted. She had work to do.

  Twenty-Eight

  She was back, this time in person. Heather Wilson’s persistence might be attractive or useful elsewhere, but not here, not for Emma.

  She wasn’t ready to tell this girl that the only thing she knew was that Heather’s mother—the one she knew—was a complete and total liar.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Heather said. “Had to buy office supplies, so…I thought maybe you’d have some more to tell me?”

  Some more? Emma had told her nothing except that the search was going poorly. Did that girl consider that something? Or was she painfully polite?

  “It isn’t going well,” Emma said. “I might as well be honest with you. Adoption searches are the hardest. For better or for worse, people go to great lengths to cover up the actual facts, but I warned you about all that, didn’t I?”

  Heather looked stricken. She was pinning too much on this search, and Emma could see it in her face. She believed, for whatever reason, that the results would turn her life around on its axis, when in reality nothing would change for Heather. She wasn’t going to become more effervescent, or clever, or ambitious, and her problems would still be there after she was given—if she was—a new history. Her parentage hadn’t been a part of her consciousness till a matter of months ago, but when it arose, it became a convenient straw to grab as the explanation for whatever was lacking in her life. The problem was, a straw was too weak to be used the way Heather wanted to, as the centerpost holding up her world.

  But Emma had not been hired to give that talk. “Heather,” she said, “since you’re here, and this is proving so hard, maybe you can think of something else that might help.”

  “Like what?”

  Anything that had a relationship with the truth, Emma refrained from saying.

  Emma was bleary and tired after last night’s marathon of examining lost and missing children’s faces, especially since nowhere among them had been the child who could have become Heather. And there was no site for children illegally bought from their natural parents. Or children snatched in foreign countries.

  “I wondered if you remember places you vacationed in your childhood, for example?” Maybe there’d be friends or relatives who’d know something in such spots.

  Heather shook her head. “We didn’t go anywhere, except over the hill to the beach sometimes.”

  Maybe she didn’t count family visits as vacations. “Relatives? Did you visit cousins or aunts or uncles or have them come visit you?”

  Heather shook her head again.

  “Never? How about friends up in Butte County?”

  “Why? Did you find something there?”

  “Nothing that makes sense yet. Do you remember going up there?”

  Heather shook her head. She wouldn’t remember—she was barely two when Nowell died there—but Emma had hoped there were contacts that had survived. Apparently not.

  Heather’s eyes matched her name, Emma realized. Bluish gray and pretty. She studied the girl’s face again. Nothing wrong with it and yet Heather managed to look half erased and slightly blurred. Emma wasn’t sure why.

  The pretty eyes opened wider. “I don’t have aunts or uncles or cousins,” she said softly, as if suddenly aware of and amazed by that fact. “My—Kay—was an only child and my adopted father, well, wherever his family was, after he died, it drifted apart. Never contacted us that I know of, and we didn’t visit them or anything.”

  “Grandparents?”

  She shook her head. “Mama told me that my grandfather died young, of cancer, and my grandmother was killed in a car crash when I was only six months old.”

  And the father’s family—whoever he was, if he existed at all—was equally inaccessible, of course.

  “Do you know where your mother went to high school? I realize I could ask her, and in fact, I will, but since you’re here already…”

  Heather looked stunned, as if the question were so beyond the pale of normal human discourse it paralyzed her tongue. Finally, she shook her head.

  “Do you think it was around here? In the city, or here in Marin?”

  “I don’t think so…I think she would have said. I think she said Oregon. And her friends here, they aren’t, like, from high school or way back, like I think she’d have.”

  “Does she have many friends?”

  Heather nodded. “Pretty much. From work and church. But nobody who ever said they knew me when I was a baby. Nothing like that.”

  Nothing like anything, Emma thought. Just empty space between Heather and her origins.

  *

  “So what sort of person does that?” Emma asked rather rhetorically over their whole wheat pasta with nonfat tomato sauce. George’s doctor had given him a short list of permitted foods. Emma found it sad that in order to live you had to half-live, but she was trying. She kept stashes of butter and chocolate and marbled meats for the nights she was alone. “Why,” she continued, “make up a husband who, with some checking, turns out to have died at fourteen?”

  “Unless the lie is that he’s dead, Emma.” George spoke softly. He, too, seemed mildly depressed by his blanded out meals. “Maybe he left her, and she doesn’t want to say so. Maybe there’s another Nowell Wilson.”

  “I already thought of that.” She pulled a piece of her roll off and controlled a sigh of longing for butter. “Do you think she’d do this number to save face? I admit she is a very proper looking woman. A churchgoer. Straitlaced, but still…”

  “Stranger things have happened,” he murmured. “All of it could be true—the adoption, all of it—and then he ups and leaves her. And she didn’t sound completely with it in the first place, the way you said she couldn’t remember names, and she hadn’t gone with him to get the baby. Maybe she’s a flake.”

  “She’s a competent woman. She raised that child on her own.
”

  “What kind of life has she lived here? Does she seem like she’s hiding a wild past?”

  “Anything but. She looks conservative, dresses quietly. She’s worked at Macy’s for fourteen years.”

  “That’s responsible. Upstanding.”

  “I know, but I can’t help but think she’s a fugitive of some kind.”

  “I’ve got it—she’s part of the witness protection program.”

  It was always hard to tell when George was serious. “Miss Mousekin. Fun to imagine her with an automatic rifle, taking out a neighborhood, then turning state’s evidence. Fun, but not easy.”

  “She could have been the wife of one of them. The girlfriend. Or the daughter.”

  “Would that have caused her to lie to her daughter about her birth?”

  “Maybe different pieces of her story are different.”

  “I get it. She’s the original bad-luck girl. A mafioso’s daughter put into the witness protection plan along with her entire family. A family she never mentions to her daughter, never sees, never visits or is visited by, not under any name. And Miss Mafiaette marries a guy who leaves her, so she lies about that, too, and says he died not knowing that somebody with the same misspelled name and Christmas birthday had died at age fourteen. And then she lies to the adopted girl saying she’s hers.”

  “Well, if you put it that way…is there any dessert?”

  “Fresh fruit.” She didn’t look at him so she couldn’t see his reaction.

  “I’m thinking sometimes I’d rather die a little sooner,” he said. “How many minutes would a slice of apple pie take off my expected life span?”

  “About that woman…”

  “Emma.” His voice lost its playfulness. “She could be any number of things, including precisely what she says she is. But what she cannot be is profitable. What this means is that as of now she is literally none of your business. You searched. That’s all you promised. Search is over. Give it up.”

  “She’s putting me on, George. Deliberately putting me on.”

  “You’ve lost your focus. The question isn’t about her—it’s about that girl’s birth mother.”

  “I cannot tell you how much it pisses me off—”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I know you.”

  “This is a goddamn mystery, and you know how I hate mysteries.” She stood, and lifted their dinner plates. Neither had finished the pasta. “I hate liars.”

  As she heard herself say the words, she felt an echo of her daughter, angry Caroline berating her for being honest about Caroline’s father, about how Harry had lived and died. Ridiculous to be angry about being told the truth. It was the basis of civilization, as far as Emma was concerned.

  “She’s going to explain herself, tell me her big fat secret,” she said.

  “And then?”

  She was at the sink now, running water. “I’m not sure. Except that the truth will come out. That’s my only goal, and I’ll do it. You heard it here first.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Billie detoured for a few moments after she parked her car. She walked from the lot to the Tiburon bike path—officially, a multipurpose path—along Richardson Bay.

  She stepped aside to allow a woman the entire path for a private dance performed on in-line skates. The woman was middle-aged and somewhat lumpy, but her striped T-shirt and shorts and half-closed eyes and wide grin shouted that she was content with herself and life was good. Headphones in place, she wove back and forth, snapping her fingers to the rhythms only she heard.

  The dancer contrasted sharply with the bird behind her, a long-legged egret making delicate and considered progress across the shallows.

  And with the unchoreographed tumbling of a pack of children Jesse’s age who performed their rough rotations through the swings and seesaw and climbing devices on the nearby tot lot, and raced in wild circles on the adjoining grassy space, their shrieks and calls joining those of the birds.

  She watched their mothers or nannies or au pairs with envy, then caught herself. She’d briefly been a full time tot lot mother, with time to play and socialize and she had to remember the cons, too, of that life.

  It was a pretty setting in which to take a break, and the other women looked happy enough, but she knew how exhausting and repetitive tot lot excursions actually were, how isolated the rest of the day.

  She wondered whether they’d envy her, if she waved and said, “Have to run—I’m investigating a capital crime.” The thought gave her a small rush.

  She turned away and walked back up the path, past Blackie’s Pasture and the statue of the swaybacked horse. The scene of the crime.

  In a few moments, she’d reached the home the Riddocks had given their son, the place they referred to as “the cottage,” a tiny home, backed up against the bay, surrounded by a small, well-tended, and colorful garden.

  She pushed open the low gate that was the only part of the white fence not covered with creeping roses. Once again, the point was driven home: It was good to have money. Forget about the root of all evil. Money could also be the root of making sure your handicapped child was comfortable and safe—unless accused of murder.

  She pressed the bell and took the moment to admire the plantings, wondering if Gavin worked in the garden and whether the green space around her own home would ever be this well maintained.

  The inside of his house was even more of a contrast to her own “cottage.” She followed the housekeeper, who identified herself as Ana, into a small, pleasantly furnished living room flooded with light and waited while Ana insisted on getting coffee for her. If she kept being offered drinks, she would soon be the county expert on bathroom decor.

  A pair of tabby cats entered the room, eyed her, then wandered back out. A dog barked and was told to quiet down by Ana. Meanwhile, she admired the room, its deep-green furniture contrasting with bright white walls. One wall was half covered by shelves filled with videotapes, CDs, and audiotapes. She browsed the titles and labels, checking Gavin’s taste in movies (comedy, slapstick, heroic historical epics) and music (all shades of rock and folk rock). As he’d said, some of the tapes were homemade with handwritten labels that said “Tracy’s Rainy-Day Favorites” or “Wake up, Gavin!” Billie was halfway through the CD titles when Ana reentered the room.

  Billie settled down, by invitation, on the green sofa, and Ana sat across from her on a matching loveseat on the other side of a slab of polished wood—cherry, perhaps—that served as a coffee table. The back of the room faced the bay and Sausalito, and bright light off the water reflected on the white walls.

  Ana was short, somewhat stocky, and thoroughly protective of the man-boy she called “Mr. Gavin.” “The police already asked all the questions,” she said. “I don’t know nothing about what happened.” She folded her arms across her middle. “Except Mr. Gavin couldn’t do something bad like that. Not to anybody, but for sure not to his best friend. And he didn’t.” With her last words, she pushed her head forward, pugnaciously, in a make-me-prove-it stance.

  Unfortunately, Ana didn’t arrive until nine each day, well past the hour when she could have provided an alibi for the morning Tracy Lester was murdered. “We don’t think so, either. As I said, I’m working on Gavin’s defense team with Gavin’s lawyer.”

  Ana sniffed with disdain.

  “This must be sad for you, too. Very,” Billie said. “You must have known Tracy Lester, too.”

  Ana nodded. “Miss Tracy was like Mr. Gavin’s sister. She saw the goodness in him. Many people could not. They were friends. They ran. The police, they want to make something dirty out of that, that’s their business, but they’re wrong. She lived in Fairfax, worked in Sausalito. This was on the way and it is a good place to run and company to run with. It would be stupid to go back home, and it would be sad for Gavin if she didn’t run with him. So she takes shower, changes, has coffee, and goes to work. Is wrong to try to make that sound dirty.”

  Billie did not point out tha
t Ana was never here during that innocent showering and changing time. She was undoubtedly correct—there did not seem to be anything but friendship between Gavin and Tracy—but that would still not make Ana’s testimony work in court. “Did Tracy leave clothing here? Cosmetics? Shampoo? Her things?” In truth, Billie had seen the list of items. Sweats, warm-ups, running tights, and shorts and a few items that must have wandered into the closet through various visits—windbreakers, caps, spare socks. Nothing suggesting the police’s “dirty” interpretation to which Ana referred.

  “The police took it,” Ana said.

  “All of it? Every last bit?” She had a wild hope that something that would turn all attention away from Gavin was sitting in a closet, or in the pocket of a leftover pair of jeans.

  Ana’s expression blanked in a way that Billie was sure meant a decision was being made. Then Ana shrugged. “Miss Tracy, she’s family. But I draw lines. Nothing personal because it could hurt Mr. Gavin.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t quite…what do you mean?”

  “Miss Tracy’s husband is not nice. She was sad all the time about him. A mean, jealous man. My heart hurts for her, but I said nothing personal in this house so that he doesn’t come here and make big trouble, you understand? Miss Tracy, she making notes about him, I think. She said she would leave them here, these notes, but I said no. I feel sorry for her—my ex-husband was jealous and it’s bad. But I said no. You understand why I was that way?”

  Billie nodded. “Certainly. Gavin was your first responsibility.”

  “And me, I’m my responsibility, too. I don’t want some husband hitting me or pushing me around. Or like happened to her. Not my own, not hers.”

  Billie nodded again. “So she didn’t leave them here.” She wondered what they could have been. A log of Robby’s offenses? Why? That didn’t sound probable. And she wondered what else was going to come after Ana’s long, explanatory preamble.