When the Bough Breaks

by Jonathan Kellerman

  "Can we do it now?"

  I hesitated. The beach was empty; there was plenty of privacy. And the moment was right. To hell with Towle...

  "I don't see why not. First, let's get real comfortable."

  I had her fix her eyes upon a smooth shiny pebble as she held it in her hand. Within moments she was blinking in response to suggestion. Her breathing slowed and became regular. I told her to close her eyes and listen to the sound of the waves slapping against the shore. Then I instructed her to imagine herself descending a flight of stairs and passing through a beautiful door to a favorite place.

  "I don't know where it is, or what's in it, but it's a special place for you. You can tell me or keep it secret, but being there makes you feel so comfortable, so happy, so in control..."

  A bit more of that and she was in a deep hypnotic state.

  "Now you can hear the sound of my voice without having to listen. Just continue to enjoy your favorite place, and have a real good time."

  I let her go for five more minutes. There was a peaceful, angelic expression on her thin little face. A soft wind rustled the loose strands of her hair. She looked tiny, sitting in the sand, hands resting in her lap.

  I gave her a suggestion to go back in time, brought her back to the night of the murder. She tensed momentarily, then resumed the deep, regular breathing.

  "You're still feeling totally relaxed, Melody. So comfortable and in control. But now you can watch yourself, just as if you were a star on TV. You see yourself getting out of bed..."

  Her lips parted, she ran the tip of her tongue over them.

  "And you go to the window and sit there, just looking out. What do you see?"

  "Dark." The word was barely audible.

  "Yes, it's dark. And is there anything else?"

  "No."

  "Okay. Let's sit there a while longer."

  A few minutes later:

  "Can you see anything else in the dark, Melody?"

  "Uh-uh. Dark."

  I tried a few more times, and then gave up. Either she had seen nothing, and the talk of two or three dark men had been confabulation, or she was blocking. In either event I wasn't going to get anything from her.

  I let her enjoy her favorite place, gave her suggestions for mastery, control, and feeling refreshed and happy, and brought her gently out of hypnosis. She came out smiling.

  "That was fun!"

  "I'm glad you liked it. You seemed to have a real good favorite place."

  "You said I don't have to tell you!"

  "That's true. You don't."

  "Well what if I want to?" she pouted.

  "Then you can." "Hmm." She savored her power for a moment. "I want to tell you. It was riding around on the merry-go round. Going round and round, faster and faster."

  "That's a great choice."

  "Each time I went around I felt happier and happier. Can we go again some time?"

  "Sure." Now you've done it, Alex. Gotten yourself into something that won't be easy to pull out of. Instant daddy, just add guilt.

  Back in the car she turned to me.

  "Alex, you said hypnotizing makes you remember better?"

  "It can." "Could I use it to remember my daddy?"

  "When's the last time you saw him?"

  "Never. He left when I was a little baby. He and Mama don't live together any more."

  "Does he visit?"

  "No. He lives far away. Once he called me, before Christmas, but I was sleeping, so Mama didn't wake me up. That made me mad."

  "I can understand that."

  "I hit her."

  "You must have been really mad."

  "Yeah." She bit her lip. "Sometimes he sends me stuff."

  "Like Fatso?"

  "Yeah, and other stuff." She dug in her purse and pulled out what looked to be a large dried pit, or seed. It had been carved to resemble a face--a snarling face--with rhinestone eyes, and strands of black acrylic hair glued to the top. A head, a shrunken head. The kind of hideous trash you can pick up at any Tijuana tourist stall. From the way she held it, it could have been the Crown Jewel of Kwarshiorkor.

  "Very nice." I handled the knobby thing and gave it back to her.

  "I'd like to see him but Mama says she doesn't know where he is. Can hypnotizing help remember him?"

  "It would be hard, Melody, because you haven't seen him in a long time. But we could try. Do you have anything to remember him by--any picture of him?"

  "Yeah." She searched in her purse again and came up with a spindled and mutilated snapshot. It had probably been fingered like a rosary. I thought of the photograph on Towle's wall. This was the week for celluloid memories. Mr. Eastman, if you only knew how your little black box can be used to preserve the past like a stillborn fetus in a jar of formalin.

  It was a faded color photograph of a man and woman. The woman was Bonita Quinn in younger, but not much prettier, days. Even in her twenties she had possessed a sad mask of a face that foreshadowed a merciless future. She wore a dress that exposed too much undernourished thigh. Her hair was long and straight and parted in the middle. She and her companion were in front of what looked like a rural bar, the kind of watering place you find peeking out around sudden highway curves. The walls of the building were rough-hewn logs. There was a Budweiser sign in the window.

  Her arm was around the waist of the man, who had placed his arm around her shoulder. He wore a T-shirt, jeans and Wellington boots. The rump of a motorcycle was visible next to him.

  He was a strange-looking bird. One side of him-the left--sagged and there was more than a hint of atrophy running all the way down from face to foot. He looked crooked, like a piece of fruit that had been sliced and then put back together with less than full precision. When you got past the asymmetry he wasn't bad-looking--tall, slender, with shoulder-length shaggy blond hair and a thick mustache.

  He had a wise-guy expression on his face that contrasted with Bonita's solemnity. It was the kind of look you see on the face of the local yokels when you walk into a small-town tavern in a strange place, just wanting a cold drink and some solitude. The kind of look you go out of your way to avoid, because it means trouble, and nothing else.

  I wasn't surprised its owner had ended up behind bars.

  "Here you go." I handed the photo back to her and she carefully put it back in her purse.

  "Want to take another run?"

  "Naw. I'm kinda tired."

  "Want to go home?"

  "Yeah."

  During the ride back to the apartment complex she was very quiet, as if she'd been doped up again. I had the uneasy feeling that I hadn't done right by this child, that I had overstimulated her, only to return her to a dreary routine.

  Was I prepared to play the rescuing good guy on a regular basis?

  I thought of the parting lecture one of the senior professors in graduate school had given our graduating class of aspiring psychotherapists.

  "When you choose to earn your living by helping people who are in emotional pain, you're also making a choice to carry them on your back for a while. To hell with all that talk of taking responsibility, assertiveness. That's crap. You're going to be coming up against helplessness every day of your lives. Your patients will imprint you, like goslings who latch on to the first creature they see when they stick their heads out of the egg shell. If you can't handle it, become an accountant."

  Right now a ledger book full of numbers would have been a welcome sight.

  7

  I drove out to Robin's studio at half-past seven. It had been several days since I'd seen her and I missed her. When she opened the door she was wearing a gauzy white dress that accentuated the olive tint of her skin. Her hair hung loose and she wore gold hoops in her ears.

  She held out her arms to me and we embraced for a long while. We walked inside, still clinging together.

  Her place is an old store on Pacific Avenue in Venice. Like lots of other studios nearby, it's unmarked, the windows painted over in opaque
white.

  She led me past the front part, the work area full of power tools--table saw, band saw, drill press--piles of wood, instrument molds, chisels, gauges and templates. As usual the room smelled of sawdust and glue. The floor was covered with shavings.

  She pushed open swinging double doors and we were in her living quarters: sitting room, kitchen, sleeping loft with bath, small office. Unlike the shop, her personal space was uncluttered. She had made most of the furniture herself, and it was solid hardwood, simple and elegant.

  She sat me down on a soft cotton couch. There was coffee and pie set out on a ceramic tray, napkins, plates and forks.

  She sidled next to me. I took her face in my hands and kissed her.

  "Hello, darling." She put her arms around me. I could feel the firmness of her back through the thin fabric, firmness couched in yielding, curving softness. She worked with her hands and it always amazed me to find in her that special combination of muscles and distinctly female lushness. When she moved, whether manipulating a hunk of rosewood around the rapacious jaws of a band saw or simply walking, it was with confidence and grace. Meeting her was the best thing that had ever happened to me. It alone had been worth dropping out for.

  I'd been browsing at McCabe's, the guitar shop in Santa Monica, looking through the old sheet music, trying out the instruments that hung on the walls. I'd spied one particularly attractive guitar, like my Martin but even better made. I admired the craftsmanship --it was a handmade instrument--and ran my fingers over the strings, which vibrated with perfect balance and sustain. Taking it off the wall I played it and it sounded as good as it looked, ringing like a bell.

  "Like it?"

  The voice was feminine and belonged to a gorgeous creature in her mid-twenties. She stood close to me--how long she'd been there I wasn't sure; I'd been lost in the music. She had a heart-shaped face topped by a luxuriant mop of auburn curls. Her eyes were almond-shaped, wide-set, the color of antique mahogany. She was small, not more than five-two, with slender wrists leading to delicate hands and long, tapering fingers. When she smiled, her upper two incisors, larger than the rest of her teeth, flashed ivory.

  "Yes. I think it's terrific."

  "It's not that good." She put her hands on her hips--very definite hips. She had the kind of figure, small-wasted, busty and gently concave, that couldn't be camouflaged by the overalls she'd thrown on over her turtleneck.

  "Oh, really?"

  "Oh, really." She took the guitar from me. "There's a spot right here--" she tapped the soundboard "--where it's been sanded too thin. And the balance between headstock and box could be better." She strummed a few chords. "All in all I'd give it an eight on a scale of one to ten."

  "You seem to be quite an expert on it."

  "I should be. I made it."

  She took me to her shop that afternoon and showed me the instrument she was working on. "This one's going to be a ten. The other was one of my first. You learn as you go along."

  Some weeks later she admitted it had been her way of picking me up, her version of come up and see my etchings.

  "I liked the way you played. Such sensitivity."

  We saw each other regularly after that. I learned that she had been an only child, the special daughter of a skilled cabinetmaker who had taught her everything he knew about how to transform raw wood into objects of beauty. She had tried college, majoring in design, but the regimentation had angered her, as had the fact that her dad had known more about form and function intuitively than all the teachers and books combined. After he died, she dropped out, took the money he left her and invested in a shop in San Luis Obispo. She got to know some local musicians, who brought her their instruments to fix. At first it was a sideline, for she was trying to make a living designing and manufacturing custom furniture. Then she began to take a greater interest in the guitars, banjos and mandolins that found their way to her workbench. She read a few books on instrument making, found she had all the requisite skills and made her first guitar. It sounded great and she sold it for five hundred dollars. She was hooked. Two weeks later she moved to L.A." where the musicians were, and set up shop.

  When I met her she was making two instruments a month as well as handling repairs. She'd been written up in trade magazines and was back-ordered for four months. She was starting to make a living.

  I probably loved her the first day I met her but it took me a couple of weeks to realize it.

  After three months we started to talk about living together, but it didn't happen. There was no philosophical objection on either side, but her place was too small for two people and my house couldn't accommodate her shop. It sounds unromantic, letting mundane matters like space and comfort get in the way, but we were having such a good time with each other while maintaining our privacy, that the incentive to make a change wasn't there. Often she would spend the night with me, other times I'd collapse in her loft. Some evenings we'd go our separate ways.

  It wasn't a bad arrangement.

  I sipped coffee and eyed the pie.

  "Have some, babe."

  "I don't want to pork out before dinner."

  "Maybe we won't go out for dinner." She stroked the back of my neck. "Ooh, such tension." She began to knead the muscles of my upper back. "You haven't felt this way in a long time."

  "There's a good reason for it." And I told her about Milo's morning visit, the murder, Melody, Towle.

  When I was through she placed her hands on my shoulders.

  "Alex, do you really want to get into something like this?"

  "Do I have a choice? I see that kid's eyes in my sleep. I was a fool for getting sucked in, but now I'm stuck."

  She looked at me. The corners of her mouth lifted in a smile.

  "You are such a pushover. And so sweet."

  She nuzzled me under my chin. I held her to me and buried my face in her hair. It smelled of lemon and honey and rosewood.

  "I really love you."

  "I love you, too, Alex."

  We undressed each other and when we were totally naked, I lifted her in my arms and carried her up the stairs to the loft. Not wanting to be apart from her for one second I kept my mouth fastened upon hers while I maneuvered myself on top of her. She clung to me, her arms and legs like tendrils. We connected, and I was home.

  8

  We slept until 10 p.m., then awoke famished. I went down to the kitchen and made sandwiches of Italian salami and Swiss cheese on rye, found a jug of burgundy and toted it all back upstairs for a late supper in bed. We shared garlicky kisses, got crumbs in the bed, hugged each other and fell back asleep.

  We were jolted awake by the telephone.

  Robin answered it.

  "Yes, Milo, he's here. No, that's all right. Here he is."

  She handed me the receiver and buried herself under the covers.

  "Hello, Milo. What time is it?"

  "Three a.m."

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Through the skylight the heavens were black.

  "What's going on."

  "It's the kid--Melody Quinn. She's freaked out-woke up screaming. Bonita called Towle who called me. Demanded you get over there. He sounds pissed."

  "Screw him. I'm not his errand boy."

  "You want me to tell him that? He's right here."

  "You're over there now? At her place?"

  "Certainly. Neither rain nor hail nor darkness stays this trusted civil servant and all that shit. We're having a little party. The doctor, Bonita, me. The kid's sleeping. Towle gave her a shot of something."

  "Figures."

  "The kid spilled to her mom about the hypnosis. He wants you there if she wakes up again--to rehypnotize or something."

  "That asshole. The hypnosis didn't cause this. The kid's got sleep problems because of all the dope he's been shoving into her system."

  But I was far from certain of that. She had been troubled after the session on the beach.

  "I'm sure you're right, Alex. I just wanted to give you the opt
ion to come down here, to know what was going on. If you want me to tell Towle to forget it, I will."

  "Hold on a minute." I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Did she say anything when she woke up-anything coherent?"

  "I just caught the tail end of it. They said it was the fourth time tonight. She was screaming for her daddy: "Oh Daddy. Daddy, Daddy'--like that, but very loud. It looked and sounded pretty bad, Alex."