Jennifer interrupted my thoughts, saying, “I know you would help me if you could. If I knew what to ask for, I would. You’re probably the only CALA parent I’d feel comfortable sharing a problem with. In the meantime, keep your eyes and ears open, would you? I don’t mean to spy on my daughter, but …”
“Right,” I said. “I understand.”
CALA is the local nickname for the “Charles and Anne Lindbergh Academy,” the elite prep school that our children attend. From the outside, it looks like an educational paradise, complete with high SAT scores, a high percentage of students attending college, and a physical plant that any Ivy League college would envy. But the parental community and student body both stagger under the strains of our own high expectations. It ain’t easy to be top-notch, or to stay at the tippy-top of the food chain with everyone nipping at your heels. Problems are often swept under the proverbial rug. Situations that should be addressed early on are gleefully ignored in favor of maintaining the CALA brand.
“It’s not spying. Our parents had access to everything we did and knew, but this generation is different,” I said, watching Robbie return and tap Detweiler on the shoulder to lead him away from the crowd. The younger cop’s back was to me, but I could tell that their conversation was intense by the sweeping gestures Robbie made as they talked. At one point, Detweiler turned away from the police chief and raised a shaky hand to his forehead, as if it hurt.
What was that all about?
“I know,” said Jennifer. “I just hope … well, I hope I’m being an overprotective mother. That’s all.”
———
“Kiki? We need to talk,” Robbie Holmes put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“What? Could we do this later? I’m getting tired. I’d like to lie down.” Between the news about Dodie and the recognition that Jennifer suspected Nicci had a problem, I felt tired. Perhaps I should have stayed in the hospital, no matter what the cost. Then all these troubles and tribulations would have taken another twenty-four hours to reach me.
“I know, but this is important.” Robbie offered me assistance in getting up. “Will you excuse us, Mrs. Moore?”
With the change in my elevation, my head started pounding and my limbs felt weighed down.
“This can’t wait?” I leaned against him to keep my voice from carrying.
“I wish it could. I got a call from the Illinois State Police. They’ve found Brenda.”
thirteen
Detweiler stood at the side of my house, white-faced and solemn. Robbie motioned us away from the crowd. “Let’s sit on Leighton’s front stoop.”
“Isn’t this rather extreme? I mean, we could go into my bedroom and shut the door.”
So what if Brenda came after me again. I would stick to home and the store. Gracie would be by my side, and she wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. Although my big dog didn’t bark often, she could get aggressive when confronted by an intruder. She’d proven her mettle in the past.
The two men didn’t respond, so I sighed and fell into step between them. Oddly enough, Detweiler didn’t put an arm around me or reach for my hand. Most of the trek, he stared down at his feet with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans.
We sat on the stoop, a brick pad facing one of the shady tree-lined streets that makes Webster Groves such a desirable town. Positioned like “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil,” we dutifully lined up, shoulder to shoulder. Although the surface of our seat was unforgiving, the view was lovely. Leighton loved flowers. Each spring he added colorful impatiens to his collection of daylilies. The riot of blood-red, tangerine-orange, and lemony-yellow always lifted my spirits.
“What gives? Am I going to have to testify against Brenda? Or appear before a grand jury?” I sounded petulant because I felt that way. I was so tired of Brenda Detweiler.
“Hard to say,” said Detweiler, rubbing his jaw so hard that his fingers left a red streak on his skin. When he finished, he scrubbed his palms along the legs of his jeans. As usual, he looked terrific with those long lean legs of his.
Robbie sighed. “You needn’t worry about talking with her. That’s not on the agenda. Not now. Not ever. A real estate agent was showing a foreclosed farmhouse to a couple. Heard a noise. A buzzing. Flies. Lots of them. The agent walked into a back bedroom and found Brenda rolled up in a blanket.”
“Probably sleeping off a high,” I muttered.
“No.” Robbie sighed. “She was dead.”
“Overdose?” I asked, as a queer sort of chill startled in my solar plexus. The sensation spread, numbing my fingers and toes. Reflexively, I clenched my hands in my lap.
“No.” Detweiler’s voice was strange. Distant. Pre-occupied.
“What? How?” The words stuck in my throat.
“Gunshot wounds. Three to the head. Execution style. An Illinois State Trooper is at her folks’ house right now.” Robbie spread his big hands wide over his knees and gripped them.
“Oh, lord. I am so, so sorry,” I said and I truly meant that. “Her poor parents. And you.”
I reached for Detweiler’s hand and cradled it in mine. “Do your parents know?”
“We can’t tell them yet,” said Robbie. “Not until hers are notified. Her mom answered the door, but her father is still up in Chicago. The State troopers were sending someone to hunt him down at the conference.”
I squeezed Detweiler’s hand. “Believe me, I know you didn’t want this. Even with all you’ve been through, you wouldn’t have wanted her dead.”
“That’s not entirely true. After I heard she was the one who shot at you, I would have cheerfully throttled her with my bare hands.” He shook his head. “As they loaded you onto the bus, I called her and left her a message. I told her I could just kill her.”
“But you didn’t mean it!”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I said it. Right before I left for my parents’ house. I spent the night there to cool off.”
“Chad, you and I have talked about this before.” Robbie tapped his fingers against his knees as he stared at the hedge across the street. “You mess with drug dealers, you ask for trouble. Those people are ruthless. They have to be to keep their underlings in line.”
“That’s what you’re thinking?” I was happy for the change of focus. “A drug dealer or someone in the supply chain got to her?”
“More than likely,” said Robbie.
Detweiler shook his head. “I don’t know that she had a supplier. I’m pretty sure she was stealing from the hospital where she worked.”
“How? They tracked every last Tylenol I took.” I shuddered as I imagined how much I paid for each of those pills.
A car drove by us, its muffler rattling, and for a short while, none of us spoke.
“Nurses with a problem give patients only a portion of the medication and pocket the rest,” Detweiler said. “Especially when there’s an injection of morphine or multiple pills. Shortchanging the sick sounds ruthless, but that’s the nature of addiction. An addict will do anything and hurt anyone to get her hands on more. Sometimes they steal from patients and trade the prescription drugs for other drugs.”
“Then it’s possible that she quit supplying someone and that person … ?”
“Came after her,” Detweiler finished my sentence.
Robbie turned mournful eyes on me. “Or one of Brenda’s contacts became frightened. Saw her face on the news and decided things had gotten too dangerous. Maybe Brenda went to one of her pals or customers for money or shelter, or even a fix. Because her face was all over those posters, that person might have decided she was a liability. Or maybe she owed money and, because she was on the run, her suppliers became convinced she would never repay them. There are any number of scenarios.”
“Any number of scenarios,” Detweiler repeated, wearily, “and all of them end badly.”
fourteen
Detweiler volunteered to identify her body rather than further upset her parents.
“I’m still her husband legally, but I’ll ask them how they want to handle her funeral arrangements. I still want to be respectful, but it’s really their call. This situation is bad enough without making it worse.”
“You’re right. That’s the right thing to do. I’m sure they would appreciate it, if they were thinking straight,” I said. “If I don’t see you for a couple of days, I’ll understand. You’ll have your hands full.”
“You can say that again,” Robbie added. “I’m sure the Illinois State Police will want any names of friends you can give them, Chad. Maybe even a list of her work colleagues or high school pals. I wonder why she went to that specific house? How she knew it was vacant—and why there weren’t any signs of forcible entry? I plan to interview a number of confidential informants in the drug trade. They’ll do the same over there. Meanwhile, I suggest you keep a low profile. You might want to avoid visiting Kiki until we’ve got a better handle on this.”
“Why?” I asked. His suggestion didn’t make sense.
Detweiler scrubbed his face vigorously with both hands, leaving bright red streaks. “Because I don’t want to lead Brenda’s killer to your door. Who knows? This might be a creep wanting to get back at me. This might have nothing to do with her drug habits. I sure don’t want to put you at risk … again.”
“I’ll have a patrolman keep an eye on the house,” Robbie nodded toward my home. “Kiki? Don’t hesitate to call nine-one-one if you see anything out of the ordinary. This isn’t the time to try to tough it out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I promised to go visit Sheila. Here’s hoping she’ll be able to come home in a day or two.”
Detweiler text-messaged his parents that he had an emergency come up, and Robbie walked me back to my party, or what was left of it. While we’d been gone, someone must have decided I’d had enough company for one day. People milled around collecting garbage, putting away food, and straightening my kitchen. Then my scrapbookiing friends said goodbye. Dodie came over, her awkward gait even more so than usual.
“Hey, Sunshine. Glad to see you. You were hurt, right?”
“I’m fine.” I hugged her.
“Are you planning to come back to the store? We could use your help,” she said.
Behind her, Horace raised his eyebrows, silently urging me to say yes. Rebekkah stood a few feet away from her parents, her body bent under the weight of her worries.
“I could use a job, so that sounds like a good deal for both of us,” I said. “Thank you, Dodie.”
“Come back to the store,” she repeated, like a stuck record. “To the store.” A vacancy in her eyes warned me she had no idea what she was saying.
“Yes, I will come back to the store. I can start work again tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
Horace turned away, staring past me at a future that didn’t include his wife.
“I have morning sickness,” I said for no particular reason at all.
“Really?” Dodie cocked her head. “I had it, too, although I can’t remember why. Was it the flu, Horace?”
“I think you were pregnant when it happened.” Stepping forward, he slipped his arm around her. They made an incongruous pair. He came up to her shoulder. Her hands and feet were large, and his as dainty as a girl’s. She was once as hairy as the wooly mammoth found south of St. Louis, and he was as hairless as a cucumber. But for as long as I’d known them—and I’d been her customer for years before becoming her employee—they had been lovebirds.
“Oy vey! I remember now! With Nathan.” Just as quickly, she puckered up as if to cry. “His memory is a blessing.”
“I think it’s time for us to go,” Rebekkah said, rubbing her arms vigorously to ward off a chill. “I bet Kiki needs to rest. Let’s go and tell Mr. and Mrs. Detweiler goodbye, okay?”
That was a feint, a move designed to steer Dodie toward the family car. Thinking about the unwelcome news the Detweilers would soon receive, I walked with the Goldfaders, waved farewell to Margit, gave the Detweilers each a goodbye hug and started toward my house.
Clancy intercepted me, as did Laurel. “Woo-hoo! Back in the saddle again!” said the younger woman, giving me a high five.
“Right. But I might not be much use.”
“Nonsense,” Laurel hugged me and planted a kiss on my cheek before rubbing at my skin gently. “That’s some bruise you’ve got there on the side of your head.”
“Kind of matches the colors in your sundress,” I giggled.
On anyone else it would have looked girlish, but on her it was alluring. Laurel was a knockout. Her sleek hair, her gorgeous figure, and her stunning features turned heads wherever she went. But even so, Laurel never acted affected by her beauty. In fact, she seemed to ignore it. And if she had an active social life, well, we never heard about it. Eventually Clancy and I had come to the conclusion that Laurel was too busy to date. In addition to working at Time in a Bottle, she had a second job as a waitress in a nightclub on the Illinois side of the river, and she was taking classes at Washington University. Mert had mentioned something about Laurel caring for a sickly mother and cautioned me not to bring that up. “I don’t want her to think I was talking behind her back. If’n she wants you to know about her mother, she’ll tell you herself.”
I smiled at my two friends, thinking what a lovely pair they made. Clancy was just as attractive as Laurel, in an older, classy way.
“Hmm. I’ll be the first to admit that the swelling around your forehead has done wonders, dah-ling, for your wrinkles,” Clancy said.
“Other people get facelifts with scalpels, I prefer the broad brush approach of a speeding bullet,” I said.
“How you feeling?” Laurel asked me.
Gosh but I wanted to spill the news about Brenda! I wanted to absolve myself of the guilt I felt for feeling relieved. After all, she’d been nothing but a major pain in the butt to me. Now she was gone! Detweiler was free! Without her spying on us, without Bill Ballard threatening me, life would be so much easier. As I dithered over how to respond, I caressed my belly and sent my baby a message: “Everything is going to be all right, little one. You’ll be part of a loving, happy family.”
Laurel smiled at my little bump. “When’s the baby due? I get first dibs on holding a baby shower.”
“Um, January, I think. I have an appointment with a gynecologist next week.”
“Wow. We usually get sleet and ice in January. That trip to the hospital should be exciting. You’re going to give birth to a slider!” Clancy grinned.
That didn’t sound very appealing to me.
“Does Dodie seem a little lost?” Laurel moved closer to Clancy and me. We waved as the Goldfaders pulled out of my driveway.
I didn’t know what Horace had told them or how he wanted to handle the situation, so I restricted my comments to what I’d observed. “Yes, she isn’t herself. Usually she’s very sharp. Very accurate. She seemed sort of foggy.”
Clancy and Laurel exchanged worried glances. “That’s what we’ve been thinking,” said Laurel. “She seems to have taken a definite turn for the worse. Yesterday, she put a cup of coffee in the microwave for an hour.”
“Day before yesterday, I found her walking around the store and looking at the signs as though she was lost,” said Clancy. “I wonder what this means for the business? I asked Margit, and she doesn’t know. She’s a minority partner just like you.”
All I could do was grunt, “Yes, I know.” My minority partner status had been a sore spot for quite a while. Not long ago, I had discovered that being a minority partner didn’t mean diddly. Oh, you could be proud of the title, but you had no voice in the running of the business. At least, not the way Time in a Bottle, the scrapbook store, was set up.
My mother and sister headed t
oward me. My friends took notice.
“To be continued,” said Clancy as she moved away.
Laurel backed off, too.
Leighton tried to pull my mother aside, urging her to make a detour, but Mom was nothing if not stubborn. He shrugged an apology at me and turned toward his house. As worried as I was about Dodie, as sick as I felt about Brenda, any interaction with my mother was ten times worse than dealing with those crises. No doubt about it, my mom had all the impact of a nuclear blast on an unprepared city.
Or to paraphrase Herman Melville, “Call me Hiroshima.”
fifteen
Once upon a time, my mother and my sister looked a lot alike. Both had longer noses, and they shared the same shade of auburn hair. Amanda inherited Mom’s more voluptuous shape, a very Marilyn Monroe-ish figure. Catherine and I were built more like our father, rather boyish and not so hippy. We all wound up with Mom’s curly hair, but mine was the most unruly. Catherine’s changed from platinum at birth to a lovely strawberry blond. All of my sisters were three inches taller than I, as was my mother.
Time had whittled Mom down to size.
Now I could stare down onto the top of her scalp and see how thin her hair was. Mom had not aged well. Deep marionette lines bracketed either side of her mouth. Her lips had become so thin that they nearly disappeared. Or maybe her constant state of unhappiness kept them under wraps. Added to this, her nose curved downward, which resulted in a witch-like appearance.
She had been a beautiful woman, but over the years, Mom’s sour outlook robbed her of her good looks. As Abe Lincoln said, “Every person is responsible for his own looks after forty.”
Of course, my mom wasn’t big on responsibility. Her strong suit was blame.
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