Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 06

by Grievous Sin

Beltran smiled wearily.

  “Spit it out, Leek,” Decker said.

  “Two days after the kidnapping, Tandy cornered me at the gym. She wanted me to write a letter of recommendation for Marie Bellson, using the home’s stationery. Tandy wanted me to write it and sign it, because if this clinic called and asked for Mr. McKay at the home, there’d be a real person there to take the call. Turns out that it was unnecessary. No one called. At least to my knowledge, no one called.”

  “Did you write the letter?” Decker asked.

  “Of course!” McKay asserted. “I still thought I was an accessory to murder—the abortion murder, not the black lady, Booker.”

  “Where’d you address the letter, Leek?”

  “To a clinic in central California, not far from Berkeley but more inland. Where all the immigrants work on the farms. I wrote this wonderful letter saying what a saint Mary Whitson was. She was using the name Mary Whitson.”

  “Whitson’s her mother’s maiden name,” Marge said.

  “Do you remember the location of the clinic?” Decker asked.

  “Spanish-sounding town. Tecale or Tecome or Tecate. Something like that. It had a rural route address. That much I remember.”

  “Do you have the exact number?”

  “Not on me. But I can retrieve it.”

  “Retrieve it!” Decker said.

  “You bet, Sergeant!” McKay broke into a smile. “Anything to help Tandy fry.”

  37

  Marge slammed down the receiver and clapped her hands. “They got Bellson!”

  The entire squad room broke into cheers. She stood up and gave Decker a high-five. “The bastard was right on the money. McKay’s going to walk, the lucky little sucker!”

  “She was where he said she was?”

  “Twenty miles south. The address McKay wrote to was a post office. The town’s sheriff was able to pinpoint the exact location of the clinic. And she was using the name Mary Whitson. The locals were very unhappy. Seems Marie spoke Spanish and had amassed a following in just a few days.”

  “She was an experienced nurse,” Decker said. “Can’t take that away. Did she offer resistance?”

  “Nope.” Marge patted Decker on the back. “Think you can smile? We’re almost there.”

  “Almost, but not quite.” Decker paused. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. I ain’t about to give her kitten back. Poor little thing almost starved to death.”

  “Keep the kitten, Pete.” Marge chuckled. “In the meantime, how about if I start the paperwork. And you can take the afternoon off and tend to your wife and kid and kitten.”

  “It’s a good offer, Rabbi,” Hollander said. “If I were you, I’d take it.” He bit into a bagel loaded with cream cheese, then held it aloft. “I bought this in your honor. I wanted to practice being ethnic for your party on Sunday.”

  “Practice makes perfect.” Decker walked to the middle of the floor and announced, “Regarding my baby’s party on Sunday…everyone’s invited.”

  Again a round of rowdy cheers.

  Decker said, “Food, champagne, and beer on the house, but you’ve got to stay and listen to a half-dozen rabbis sermonize about the wonders of God and my kid.”

  The room filled with boos and hisses.

  Decker laughed. Marge slipped his jacket over his shoulders. “Go home.”

  “I want to talk to Marie,” Decker said.

  “We probably won’t get her in until tomorrow, Pete. Go home.”

  Decker didn’t move. “We found out Leek’s motivation for helping Tandy. He thought she had him on some ridiculous murder charge. But why did Marie help Tandy? What was her motivation? It can’t just be guilt about the affair with Tandy’s father?”

  Marge turned him to the door. “Why don’t we ask her once we have her in custody?” She gave him a gentle shove. “Go home!”

  Walking through the door to his house, Decker heard the TV blaring at head-splitting volume. To his utter shock, he saw a medium-sized sturdy man staring at the tube. His hair was thick and dark, his ruddy complexion spotlighted by a sunbeam. The man wore jeans and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up to expose thick tanned forearms.

  Dad!

  Lyle Decker was posed two inches from the box—hence the overdrive decibel level: Dad was hard of hearing. Grinning, Decker jogged to his father and turned him around. They exchange hugs.

  “What are you doing here?” Decker asked.

  “What?”

  Decker muted the volume and raised his voice. “What a great surprise! What are you doing out here?”

  Dad said, “Your mom said it’s time we come out and see our new granddaughter. See the old one, too. So we came out.”

  “You closed the store, Dad?”

  Dad shrugged. “We’re old now. Life is short. Besides, when Mom says come out, we come out.”

  Decker laughed and shook his head. “Where is Mom?”

  “Baking and cooking with your wife, your big daughter, your mother-in-law, and the baby nurse—all of them been chatting like magpies. Speaking of pies, they’re baking lots of pies for your party. Apple, strawberry, cherry, apricot, and peach. No boysenberry. Fresh is too expensive. Smells good, don’t it?”

  Decker became aware of his nose. “Yes, it smells very good.”

  “Your barn’s a mess, Son.”

  Decker smiled. “Yes, it is.”

  “I bought some two-by-fours. Figured I could make myself useful as long as Mom dragged me out here.”

  “Dad, you don’t have to do that.”

  “Heck, it’s better than sitting around, listening to the ladies chirp.” He patted Decker’s back. “You got a beautiful little girl, Son. Two of ’em. Good Lord, Cindy’s big and wonderful. You and Jan did something right.”

  Decker slapped his dad’s back. “Good role models. Let me say hello to everybody. Then I’ll meet you in the barn.”

  “Your boys are out there now. I got them sortin’ nails. It’s okay if they help?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Good. Put some meat on their bones. Especially the younger one. He’s as skinny as a stick.”

  “Jake’s thin but healthy.”

  “Yeah, he’s a wiry guy. But a little muscle wouldn’t hurt him none.” The old man looked over his son. “You still look good.”

  Decker smiled. “The yearly physicals force me to stay fit, Dad.”

  “Don’t do much for your brother,” Lyle said. “He’s got a gut on him bigger than a sumo wrestler. You come out to the barn when you’re done with the womenfolk. And get outta that suit. Can’t fix a barn in a suit.”

  “I’m aware of that, Dad.”

  The elder Decker smiled. “Good to see you, Son.”

  “Good to see you, too.”

  Dad walked outside. Decker was about to turn off the TV when he saw a promo for the six o’clock news—a tearful and joyous Lourdes Rodriguez being handed a pink-blanketed bundle. Matty Lopez was at her side. He looked happy, but less so. Impending fatherhood had suddenly become a reality for the teenager.

  Decker switched off the picture and went inside the kitchen. As per his father’s lament, the place was as noisy as a chicken coop. Mom was as no-nonsense as ever, her salt-and-pepper hair tied in a bun, a starched white apron neatly covering her dress. Her weight was perfectly proportioned to her five feet eight inches—as it had been all her life. Ida Decker was a slender, strong woman with busy hands and an opinion on everything.

  “How’s it going, ladies?” Decker asked.

  The women broke into high-pitched welcome squeals. His mother smiled at him, the corners of her eyes webbed with crow’s-feet. Decker smiled back and gave her a warm embrace.

  “I don’t believe you’re here.” Decker turned to Rina. “Did you know about this?”

  “Of course I knew about this,” she answered. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  To his mother, Decker said, “I can’t believe you actually came.”

  “Your wife invited us out
, so we came.”

  “I’ve invited you two out at least fifty times over the past twenty years,” Decker said. “You never once came for me.”

  “Oh, don’t give me that nonsense,” Mom said, a gleam in her eye. “I came for the wedding.”

  “Gee thanks, Mom.”

  Rina gave Decker a peck on the cheek. “Talk respectfully to your mother.”

  “Yes, you talk nice to her,” Magda answered.

  Decker said, “I’m getting out of here.” He glanced around the room, saw Hannah sleeping in her cradle. He bent down and gently kissed his daughter on her nose. “Are they teaching you early to be a female chauvinist?”

  “Peter, you’re talking too loud,” his mother scolded. “You’re going to wake her up. And furthermore, you’re going to make our cakes fall.”

  Cindy beat her chest. “Go fix a barn and be macho, Dad.”

  “Good idea.”

  Decker left the room, and no one said good-bye. Too wrapped up in pie dough. A moment later, Cindy came to his side and gave him a hug. “Isn’t it nice to have everyone here?”

  “It is…in theory.”

  Cindy slugged him playfully. “You’re such a cynic.”

  “Only when I’m around this many women.”

  “You know what, Daddy? I’ve finally figured out who Grandpa and Grandma remind me of.”

  “Who?”

  “Uncle Henry and Aunt Em from The Wizard of Oz.”

  Decker laughed. “Yeah, I suppose they do a little.”

  “A lot,” Cindy said. “What I want to know is, what happened to Dorothy’s parents?”

  “Read the book.”

  “Poor little girl raised by her aunt and uncle, her only friends three goofy farmhands. Where were the parents? Did they die in an accident? Were they murdered? Did they abandon her? Where were her parents?”

  “Some people just have lousy parents, Cin,” Decker said.

  He thought of Lita Bellson. A self-proclaimed shitty mother. But at least she’d never abandoned Marie.

  And in turn Marie didn’t abandon her.

  He paused.

  Auntie Em…Uncle Henry!

  Marie turned out to be the stable, dependable one…like my first husband, Henry.

  The dependable one!

  Decker bit his lip.

  Only she wasn’t his!

  Decker felt a surge of adrenaline. “I bet that’s it!”

  “What’s it?” Cindy asked.

  Decker checked his watch. Plenty of time before the Sabbath started. He kissed his daughter’s cheek. “Honey, can you do me a favor? I’ve got to run somewhere. Can you tell Grandpa I’ll come help him in the barn in about an hour?”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  Decker held his daughter’s shoulders. “Cin, you see the news promo on TV? The one of Lourdes Rodriguez getting her baby back?”

  The teenager’s face lit up. “She’s got Caitlin back?”

  “Yep,” Decker said. “Watch the promo if you can get away from the hen party. It’s really touching. And then pat yourself on the back. You deserve as much of the credit for their reunion as anyone else on the case.”

  Cindy’s eyes moistened. “That was a real nice thing to say, Daddy. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’d make a good detective, wouldn’t I?”

  “You quit college, you’re dead.”

  “Just tossing out ideas, Dad.”

  “Save your tossing for salads.”

  Lita Bellson sat in the sunroom, eyes upon a drawing of a pair of stick figures holding hands. They were girls, wearing triangles for skirts, their faces aglow with smiling mouths disproportionately large for the heads. Decker tiptoed over to the wheelchair and placed his hand softly upon Lita’s shoulder.

  “Nice, sunny afternoon,” he said.

  “Nothing but sunshine,” Lita said. “I hate it. I hate Los Angeles. Weather never changes. Like this place…like my life now. A curse to live this long. Now, with Marie and Leek gone, I’m all alone…double fucking curse. I wish I was dead. Even spumoni ice cream don’t mean much to me anymore.”

  “It all comes around in a circle, doesn’t it, Lita?”

  “I guess. Life and death…death and life. One big fucking circle.”

  “I suppose someone might think there was biblical justice in your living all alone in your waning years,” Decker said. “The one who abandons in the end gets abandoned. Some people might find that…interesting.”

  Lita didn’t speak for a long time. When she did, it was barely above a whisper. “I never abandoned anyone. He took her from me. I just didn’t bother to put up a fuss. Felt I owed him that much…for all the misery I put him through.”

  “Lots of affairs, Lita?”

  “I never painted me as a virgin. Not to anyone, certainly not to Henry.”

  “Henry, your first husband.”

  “My only husband. I never married Marie’s father.”

  “What was Henry’s last name?” Decker asked.

  “Henry Tollan. Nice guy. He couldn’t live with me, couldn’t live without me. Finally married me. Thought a child would change my ways. It didn’t. It never works that way.”

  “Why didn’t you put up a fuss when he took her? After all, Henrietta was your daughter, too.”

  “Guess I felt I owed him that much. Maybe I felt Hetty was better off without me.” She shrugged. “It’s all ancient history.”

  But it wasn’t. Sins of the past were responsible for sins of the present. Decker said, “Did you try to keep in contact with Hetty at all?”

  Lita shook her head. “No husband, no child…I got what I wanted…a clean break.”

  “How old was Hetty when you walked out of her life?”

  “When he took her, you mean. She was five. I insisted that he wait till she had her fifth birthday. I made her a pretty dress that I wanted to see her in. I took a picture of her in that dress. I wanted something to remember her by.”

  “Is that how Marie found out she had a half-sister? By the picture?”

  “They don’t call you detective for nothing.”

  “How old was Marie when she found out?”

  “Sixteen. She used it against me. Said she was the kind of person she was because I was the kind of person I was. She was wild because she liked the boys. But you know kids. They use one excuse or another to crucify their parents.”

  “Did she go to Berkeley to be near Hetty?”

  “To be near Hetty, to be near the hippies, to be near the drugs, to be near the sex and the communes. Of course, Marie told me she was going to find the mother she never had.”

  Lita laughed softly.

  “So right away she messes things up—carrying on with her own half-sister’s husband.” She closed her eyes. “I felt bad for Hetty. Really, I did. First I go ahead and mess her up. Then her sister goes ahead and messes her up. She was always kind of a fragile kid. I heard later she had a breakdown—her and the kid. Hetty had a kid—a daughter, I think. She was little when it all happened. That’s what got to Marie more than anything. That the kid suffered. That’s when she started looking to Jesus. I told her, don’t put the blame on me for this one. I may have screwed up in my life. But I never fucked any of my sisters’ husbands.”

  There was a long, reflective moment of silence. Lita was back in another world. And Decker thought about this one.

  No wonder Marie took Tandy under her wing when they met up again as adults. Marie looked upon their relationship as a second chance. An opportunity to cleanse the soul.

  The prodigal daughter.

  And it might have worked for her except that Tandy had come across a lockbox containing old photos and love letters. Fragile to begin with and still swaddled in grief over the loss of her family and aborted baby, Tandy had never fully forgiven her mother or her father. After reading the letters, seeing tangible proof of her father’s affair with her aunt, she wasn’t about to absolve anyone. For a while, weight lifting
helped keep the voices away, but it just wasn’t enough.

  Deep emotional hurt never really goes away. It always leaves a scar, even if it fades to the faintest of spots. Trouble brews when the pain refuses to heal, left as an open wound just waiting to abscess. And it doesn’t take much steeping if the person is unbalanced to begin with.

  “Know who your granddaughter is, Lita?”

  Lita opened her eyes. “Who?”

  “Tandy Roberts. She’s Hetty’s kid.”

  “Tandy, the fat nurse who used to work here?”

  “Yep.”

  “She’s Hetty’s kid?”

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Lita was quiet for a moment. “I can see that. Tandy was strange. A little like Hetty. I always got along with Tandy. I felt sorry for her, but I liked her, too. I’m glad I got a chance to know her, even if I didn’t know she was my own blood. Sometimes things work out for the best.”

  “Sometimes they do.”

  “Can you wheel me out of the sun? I’m gettin’ hot.”

  “My pleasure.” Carefully, Decker wheeled the old lady to one of the dining tables. “Anything else you need, Lita, before I go?”

  “You going to visit me again, handsome?”

  “No, Lita. I don’t think so.”

  “I can dream.” The old woman shrugged. “What time is it?”

  “About four-thirty.”

  “Dinner’s not until five.”

  “That’s only a half hour away.”

  “It seems like a year when you got nothing better to do.” The old woman picked her head up, and their eyes met. Lita’s face was as hard as stone, as craggy as a mountain ridge. “Think you can get me some spumoni?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  She gave Decker a conspiratorial wink. Then she said, “Think if I’d had boys, I would have been a better mother?”

  “I don’t know, Lita.”

  “Maybe.” Lita waited a while before speaking. “But probably not. Like I always freely admitted, I was a shitty mother.”

  38

  Highlighted by the moonlight streaming through the barred window, Marie’s face appeared blue and skeletal. Her bony hands rested in her lap, pressing her cotton prison gown between her legs. Her legs were bare and crossed at the ankles; her feet held soft shoes. She refused to turn when Decker entered the cell, refused to acknowledge his presence. His questions fell upon deaf ears.