Crystal Clear

by Jane Heller

  “How?” I said. Middle-aged parents were always going on and on about how having kids later in life changed them, forced them to rethink their priorities, put them in touch with the child inside them, yada yada yada. But I had a feeling there was more to Terry’s relationship with his daughter. “And where’s her mother, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Somewhere. Anywhere. Gone.” He shrugged.

  “You don’t know where she is?”

  “Not a clue. She left town when Annie was a week old.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Oh, I’m very serious. If you thought I was irresponsible, you should have met Gwen. She wins the prize.”

  “She left her own daughter when she was an infant?” I asked, incredulous. “That beautiful little girl downstairs?”

  “Yup. Annie doesn’t remember her at all, obviously.”

  “But why, Terry? What happened to make her leave?”

  He hesitated for a moment before responding. “Gwen was a quote-unquote Free Spirit,” he said finally, “always up for something new and different. We met when I was knocking around in Boulder, about four years after you and I split up. She and I were in the same ‘space,’ as they say here in Sedona. We were both immature and restless and looking for ways to ignore the fact that we didn’t know what the hell to do with our lives. So we traveled together, taking jobs wherever we landed. We had a lot of laughs, a lot of adventures. Gwen was a wild one, the just-do-it type.”

  “My polar opposite, you mean.”

  “Your polar opposite.”

  “Was that on purpose? I mean, did you deliberately set out to find the anti-Crystal?”

  He smiled. “Sure, I did. You were—you are—very focused, very directed, Crystal. You’ve always known exactly where you were going, what you wanted to do. But when we were married, I couldn’t get it together fast enough to keep up with you, to keep from disappointing you. After we broke up I figured that the next woman I hooked up with should be as undependable as I was. That way, there wouldn’t be any disappointments. Timing is everything, you know?”

  “Everything,” I agreed, still marveling at the change in my ex-husband. In the old days, he was completely un-selfexploring, never analyzing or even discussing his actions except to joke about them. “Were you happy with Gwen?” I asked him.

  “For a while. We came to Sedona and fell in love with the place. It was as gorgeous then as it is now but minus the casinos, the golf courses, and the astrologers on every corner. We stayed. Gwen got pregnant. We both said, ‘Cool. Another new experience.’”

  “But it wasn’t cool?”

  Terry shook his head. “Gwen gave birth only six and a half months into the pregnancy. Annie was a preemie—three pounds, six ounces when she was delivered. The doctors told us she might not make it.”

  “Oh, Terry. That must have been awful.”

  “It was awful. Annie had a million things wrong with her, not the least of which were her undeveloped lungs. She had to be rigged up to a ventilator until she could breathe on her own. She didn’t come home from the hospital for three months.”

  “But you said that Gwen left town after a week.”

  “That’s what I said. The minute it dawned on her that she couldn’t just drop a kid out of her womb and move on to the next Life Event, that she had actually brought another person into the world, a child who would need love and support and, possibly, long-term medical care, she couldn’t handle it, couldn’t deal with the responsibility. Within days after being discharged from the hospital, she was out of here. Gone. So long, Terry. So long, baby daughter. She didn’t even wait around long enough to name Annie. I named her the day Gwen took off, and I haven’t seen or heard from the lady since. Will Singleton said at the time that it must be my karma—I flaked out on you, so Gwen turned around and flaked out on me.”

  “Listen, Terry. You can’t keep beating yourself up about us,” I consoled him. “You’ve got to let go of the past.”

  “Oh, you mean the way you have?” he said wryly.

  He had me there. I decided to change the subject. “You and Will have known each other since Annie was born?” I asked.

  “Since I came to Sedona,” said Terry. “Will and his wife, Jean, were our first friends here. He’s like an uncle to Annie.” He smiled. “He explains Native American traditions to her and she explains campaign-finance reform to him.”

  I laughed. “Before we get off that subject, how did Annie become so interested in political issues? It’s pretty unusual for someone her age, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” Terry said. “She didn’t get it from me. I majored in political science in college, as you may remember, but I’ve forgotten most of what they taught me. I think Annie just likes the idea of good citizenship, of public service. I told you, she’s a special kid, and I’m not saying that because I’m her father.”

  I sighed, thinking of my own father, who was probably planted in his BarcaLounger right that very minute, deeply involved in an episode of “The Rockford Files.”

  “So tell me what happened after Gwen left,” I urged Terry. “You were all alone with a critically ill newborn in the hospital. How on earth did you manage?”

  “I didn’t have any choice,” he said. “I suddenly had someone depending on me, someone who couldn’t survive without me. I suddenly had a reason to change.”

  “I wasn’t reason enough?” I asked before I could stop myself. “I was your wife. I was depending on you, too.” So much for letting go of the past.

  “I never viewed you that way, Crystal, I really didn’t. You always struck me as someone who would survive just fine without me. And I was right.”

  He was right. I had survived just fine without him. It was only my chakras that weren’t in such hot shape.

  “I interrupted you,” I said. “You were telling me how having Annie depending on you changed you.”

  “It changed me and my lifestyle. After she was born, I couldn’t live minute to minute anymore. I couldn’t think about pleasing myself twenty-four hours a day. There was another mouth to feed and I was the one who was left to feed it. I had to create a stable environment for her to come home to. I was in charge of getting her well, sending her to school, making it possible for her to lead a normal life. How did I do that? During the three months she was in the hospital, I came up with the idea for the Jeep Tour business. My father lent me money to get the company off the ground. When they let Annie out of the hospital, my mother came and helped me take care of her. Jean Singleton helped, too. I bought this house. The business did well. I paid my father back. Along the way I learned how to be a parent—and in learning how to be a parent, I learned how to be a man.”

  Swell, I thought. He’s not only better looking now than he was twenty years ago; he’s Mr. Sensitive and Mr. Responsible, an impossible combination to resist. It may have taken a while, but he’s become the person I’d always hoped he’d become, the person I’d always dreamed he’d become. And I? Well, I had accomplished a lot in twenty years, too. I hadn’t raised a child all by myself or created a business from the ground up, but I’d made the big bucks and found a man who wanted to marry me and—

  Oh, come off it, Crystal, I chided myself. Timing is everything, just as Terry said. Twenty years ago, he was the one who was searching for an identity and you were the one who knew what you wanted out of life. And now, your roles are reversed. Face it. He’s the one who’s found inner peace and you’re the one who’s out here trolling for it.

  I was wracking my brains for something appropriately pithy to say—something involving Beauty, Truth, etc.—when Annie bounded into the room.

  “Who’s on the phone, honey?” Terry asked, gazing at her with utter devotion.

  “A friend of Crystal’s named Rona,” Annie said excitedly. “She’s calling long distance. From New York.”

  Rona. Obviously, she had tried me at Tranquility and the ever-efficient operator had forwarded the call to T
erry’s number. I could just picture her face when she found out I had moved in with the very man she’d warned me to stay away from.

  “Would you two excuse me?” I said.

  “Sure,” said Terry. “Go ahead. The phone’s in the kitchen.”

  I thanked him and went downstairs to speak to Rona, who cross-examined me about Terry’s house—how many bedrooms he had, whether my room was adjacent to his, things like that.

  “Just say it,” I challenged her. “You want to know if Terry and I will be sleeping in the same room.”

  “I want to know if you and Terry will be sleeping in the same room.”

  I laughed. “No. I’ll be ensconced in the guest room. Down the hall from the master. It’s an arrangement, Rona. Strictly platonic. Terry’s helping me out of a tough situation.”

  “And I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

  “Sheba, too? I thought it was Siam.”

  “Don’t make fun.”

  We chatted for a few more minutes. After we hung up, I went back upstairs to Terry and Annie.

  “Your friend told me she worries about you a lot,” Annie commented. “It probably gets on your nerves sometimes, but it only means that she cares.”

  I smiled at her, at her wisdom, at the old soul inside the girlish body. I had never spent much time around children—I had always found them repetitive, not to mention messy—but within minutes, this child had managed to win me over.

  “I’m lucky to have Rona for a friend,” I told her. “Do you have a best friend, Annie?”

  She was pondering the question when the phone rang a second time.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s probably Rona again, calling to remind me to wash behind my ears.”

  “I’ll get it,” Annie said, jumping up from the bed and sprinting down the stairs.

  “She’s got a lot of energy, your daughter,” I said to Terry. “It must be all the vortexes around here.”

  Terry smiled. “It’s either the vortexes or the fact that she’s only ten years old. Ten-year-olds have a lot of energy, as you’ll see.”

  Terry and I talked for another minute or two, then he went to get me an extra blanket and some fresh towels. Only seconds after he returned, Annie came flying back into the room, this time her face flushed with fear. She may have possessed a wisdom beyond her years, but at that moment she looked every bit the scared little girl.

  “What is it, honey?” Terry asked with concern. “Who was on the phone?”

  “It was Aunt Jean,” she said breathlessly, referring to Jean Singleton, I guessed.

  “Is there a problem at the office?” he said. I remembered then that Will Singleton’s wife worked for Terry’s Sacred Earth Jeep Tour company.

  “No. It’s about Uncle Will,” Annie told her father, her lower lip beginning to quiver. “Aunt Jean said the police took him down to the station, to question him.”

  “Question Will? What the hell for?” Terry said with a mixture of confusion and indignation. “He’s never even had a parking ticket.”

  “Aunt Jean said they think he killed that lady. The one who was missing from Crystal’s hotel. The one who signed up for your Jeep Tour, Dad,” Annie managed before dissolving into tears.

  Part Three

  Chapter Seventeen

  There was good news and bad news for Will Singleton. The bad news was that the police were convinced that he murdered Amanda. The good news was that, since they couldn’t find her body, they couldn’t arrest him. Without a corpse, without lab test results, without definitive proof that there actually was a murder, they weren’t about to throw Will in jail. Yet.

  “But why you, Will?” Terry asked his friend when we had all gathered on Terry’s screened porch at about eight o’clock that Thursday evening. “You’d never hurt anybody.”

  “That’s right, Dad. Uncle Will doesn’t hurt people. He heals them,” said Annie, who was sitting next to me, acting brave in spite of the situation.

  She was so cute that I was forced to grab her hand and squeeze it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d grabbed anyone’s hand and squeezed it, much less a child’s. Annie responded by giving me a quick peck on the cheek. Boy, were we bonding.

  “The County Attorney, Dennis Cooley, believes Will had the means, the opportunity, and the motive,” said Jean Singleton, a plump, plain-looking woman who seemed to be parroting the legalese she’d been hearing in an effort to make sense of it.

  “Let me tell you all what happened and maybe you can figure it out,” said Will. “Yesterday afternoon, after Terry brought Mrs. Reid and the other passengers back to the hotel, she called Jean at the office and said she wanted to leave a message for me. I had told her I have no phone at the cabin.”

  Jean nodded, confirming that Amanda had indeed telephoned the Jeep Tour office.

  “You mean the woman was serious about wanting you to take her out on a Vision Quest?” Terry asked in amazement.

  “Very serious. I did not have time to call her back until later that night,” said Will. “She was in the middle of dinner and she was unhappy that she did not hear from me sooner.”

  “That’s no surprise,” I said. “It isn’t nice to speak ill of the Disappeared, but Amanda didn’t strike me as the most patient person on the planet.”

  “She was definitely in a big, big hurry,” Will agreed. “She said that the Jeep Tour was not giving her the spiritual awakening she was seeking in Sedona. She told me she wanted to speed up her growth. She said she was being written about in a famous magazine, that the magazine had a deadline, and that the reporter needed something ‘dramatic’ to say about her.”

  “He’s got something dramatic now,” I said, remembering how desperately Michael had wanted a real story to cover.

  “So you said you’d take her on a Vision Quest?” Terry asked Will.

  He nodded regretfully. “Mrs. Reid was determined to go, no matter what I said.”

  “You know, it’s odd that Amanda went to you directly to make the arrangements,” I told Will. “She usually had Tina, her assistant, handle all her appointments.”

  “She said it was nobody’s business if she did the Vision Quest,” Will explained. “She didn’t want any of the others to know about it.”

  “She probably figured they’d try and talk her out of it,” I offered.

  “That could be,” said Will. “Anyway, I went along with her wishes. I thought I could help her.”

  “And now they think you killed her,” Jean Singleton said, shaking her head with the irony of it all. “It isn’t fair, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t. Tell us what happened next, Will,” Terry urged.

  Will sighed before continuing with the story. He was slumped in his chair, his eyelids heavy with exhaustion. “At four o’clock this morning, I drove to Tranquility to pick up Mrs. Reid,” he said.

  “Four a.m. That explains why she wanted to go to bed early,” I said.

  “When I arrived at the hotel’s front gate, I stopped and told the guard I was picking up Mrs. Reid,” Will went on. “He called her room. She must have said everything was okay because he waved me through without a problem.”

  “Without a problem?” Jean said, becoming more agitated. “It was that hotel guard who told the police about you, Will.”

  “He did what he thought was best, Jean. Besides, why should I deny that I was with Mrs. Reid this morning? I have nothing to hide. I did nothing wrong.”

  “You did nothing wrong,” everybody echoed in unison, like a Greek chorus.

  I regarded Will then, regarded all of them, and was suddenly struck by how weird the whole scene was, totally surreal. I mean, there I was, an accountant from New York—a CPA whose idea of a big night was taking work home instead of staying late at the office. What in the world was I doing in Sedona, Arizona, the mecca of meshuggenehs, sitting around the house of the ex-husband I hadn’t seen in twenty years, holding hands with his daughter, discussing the possible murder of the millionaire wife of a famous n
ovelist, attempting to show my support for the Lakota Sioux guide whom the police had dragged from his primitive cabin and fingered as their prime suspect? Talk about a change of scenery.

  “After I picked up Mrs. Reid at Tranquility, I drove her out to Cathedral Rock,” said Will. “We hiked up the cliffs to an isolated corner where I like to take people for Vision Quests. It was still dark at that hour of the morning and Mrs. Reid was afraid.”

  “Afraid that she would slip and fall?” I asked.

  “Afraid that she would break a nail,” said Will.

  There were jeers all around.

  “It sounds unbelievable but it is the truth,” Will maintained. “Mrs. Reid was upset that someone might see her with two bad nails. She told me she broke a nail yesterday, when she tried to dig up a crystal at Bell Rock.”

  “I remember,” Terry groaned.

  “The finger was bleeding when I picked her up at the hotel,” Will added. “She said she did not know how to fix it.”

  Gee, she must have been out of Krazy Glue, I thought uncharitably.

  “The bleeding finger probably accounts for the three drops of blood the police found in her bathroom,” said Terry. “But three drops of blood from a broken nail are hardly signs of a struggle. They’ve got to have more on Will than that.”

  Will shook his head wearily. However innocent he was, he sensed that circumstantial evidence was mounting against him and that even innocent men could be found guilty. “Once we got all the way up the canyon, to the spot I had chosen, I spread a blanket down on the rock and Mrs. Reid sat on it. I told her the Vision Quest was now beginning. I used crystals to activate her chakra centers, I smudged her with burning sage to cleanse her aura, I fanned her with hawk feathers to draw out any illness inside her, I chanted to the Creator and asked him to watch over her, and then I left.”

  “And she was perfectly fine when you left?” I asked.

  “Except for the fingernail, yes,” said Will. “I told her that I would be back for her tomorrow morning at four o’clock and that when I did come back for her, we would discuss her journey. I assured her that within twenty-four hours, she would feel one with nature, one with Spirit, one with herself.”