Head To Head

by Linda Ladd

  As we walked around to the open front porch, which ran the length of the old farmhouse, then wrapped around the far side, Sheriff Barnett bluntly asked Black what his business was in Hartville, listened politely—obviously scoping him out to make sure he could leave Black alone with his Wright County constituents—then said he’d be on his way. I thanked him and took a seat in my favorite place, a long white swing at the end of the porch. Black stood leaning up against a porch pillar.

  “You have a beautiful farm here, Mrs. Wakefield.” Doctor Nick Polite all of a sudden.

  “Thank you.” Aunt Helen was nobody’s fool. She eyed him suspiciously, like he was going to steal her porch swing out from under me. But she was being polite, too. We were in the middle of a war of polite, but I was abstaining from civility until I heard what Black had in mind.

  Aunt Helen said, “Would you like some lemonade? I’ve got fresh-squeezed this morning in the icebox.”

  “That sounds great,” Black gushed.

  Jeez. I looked out over the quiet, peaceful pastures.

  After Aunt Helen disappeared into the house, Black said, “I don’t think your aunt likes me.”

  “And that surprises you?”

  Black was on his best behavior, so he ignored this. “It’s really peaceful out here.”

  “That’s why I come down here.”

  “Is this where you went the year you dropped out of sight?”

  “Yes. I sat out here on this swing most of the time, just staring out over the fields. Everybody around here let me alone, and the media never found me. I love all this peace and quiet. I wish I could live here.”

  “I can see why.”

  Aunt Helen came back outside a few minutes later and set down frosty glasses of lemonade with lemon slices floating on top, a platter of her famous two-layer red velvet cake with cream cheese icing, white serving plates, forks, and white paper napkins with red hearts on them. While she cut the cake, she said to Black, “I believe I’ve seen you on my television set a time or two. You do that kind of work, do you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But most of the time, I’m just a doctor.” Boy, he was on his best behavior. Ma’am, and everything. I sure never heard him call anybody else ma’am.

  Aunt Helen said, “What kind of doctor?”

  “I practice psychiatry.”

  Helen questioned me silently with narrowed eyes that asked: Quack? Then she sat down on a metal rocking chair beside the swing. She folded her hands in her lap. “So what do you need to know from me?”

  “I told him that you can’t tell him anything more than I did, but he doesn’t believe me,” I said.

  Black took a green metal chair across from us and leaned forward. “Mrs. Wakefield, I think you might be able to clear up some things about Claire’s childhood that only you would know. She’s been through more than any one woman should have to endure, and I want it to stop.”

  Helen looked troubled. “That’s true, and her mother, too.”

  “Clarie doesn’t remember much about her mother’s disappearance.”

  I said, “I told you everything I can remember. If there’s anything more, Aunt Helen would’ve told me a long time ago. Wouldn’t you, Aunt Helen?”

  When Aunt Helen leaned back in her rocking chair and clammed up, I dragged my foot and stopped the swing. Uh-oh.

  “Aunt Helen? You have told me everything, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there are some things I haven’t mentioned.”

  I knew at once she was hiding something. By the look on Black’s face, so did he. He said, “Do you know what happened to her mother? Did she really just disappear?”

  “Yes.” Helen rocked gently. “Did Annie tell you we’re not really blood kin, Dr. Black?”

  “No, something else she just forgot to mention.”

  “I didn’t see any need to mention it.” But I felt edgy and nervous, afraid I was about to be buried under another avalanche of hurt.

  Aunt Helen looked at Black. “Annie’s mother, Regina, was best friend to my daughter, Linda, all through their high school years.”

  Black said, “Did Regina’s family live around here, too?”

  “Used to, but most of them are dead now. Father was a minister, a good man but strict as fire with those poor girls of his. Both of them got away from home as soon as they could.”

  I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this, Aunt Helen?”

  “I didn’t see the need.”

  Black probed deeper. “Regina had a sister, right?”

  “Yes. Kathy. She took her own life years ago. Annie, you found her.”

  “Yeah, I found her.” I put my cake down on the table, suddenly not hungry anymore.

  “I guess the time has come to tell you the truth, Annie. I guess I’ve been trying to protect you all these years, too.”

  “Tell me what?”

  She sighed. “The truth is that long before you were born, your mother, Regina, ran off with a boyfriend home on leave from the Marine Corps. When the boy shipped out, she came back home, but her father, your Grandpa Baker, disowned her and threw her out of the house. That’s when she came here and lived with Linda and me for a while.” Aunt Helen took my hand. “And that’s when she found out she was pregnant with you, Annie.”

  I couldn’t move, couldn’t believe she’d kept this from me all these years. Aunt Helen shook her head. “It was so different back then; you just wouldn’t believe the way it was. Such a terrible stigma to be an unwed mother, especially when your father was a clergyman. So, before she got big enough to show, I got her a job cooking and cleaning for some friends of mine who ran a soup kitchen down in Poplar Bluff. They had a place where she could live safely while she worked there, and I knew the people were good-hearted and would do right by her. Regina wanted out of this town more than anything. She didn’t want anyone here to know she was having a baby.”

  I blinked and stared at her, then blinked some more, having some trouble taking this all in.

  Black said, “So that’s where Claire was born? In Poplar Bluff?”

  I said, “Why did everybody tell me I was born in Dayton, Ohio?”

  “Your mother didn’t want you to know the truth.”

  I just sat there. Black got up and sat down on the swing beside me.

  “Linda and I kept in touch with your mother as much as we could, mainly by telephone. Her family never really accepted her back into the fold.”

  Black said, “And Annie’s father? What happened to him?”

  “He never made it back home, got killed in some godforsaken place.”

  “How could you not have told me all this? Why did you keep it a secret all these years? Who was my father? What was his name?”

  “His name was Scott Parker. I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t see the need to go into all the sordid details of the past, especially when Regina went to so much trouble to conceal it. You’d suffered enough without hearing about the unpleasant circumstances of your birth.”

  Black said, “Booker found out that Regina eventually got married in Poplar Bluff to a man who was an undertaker. Is that true?”

  Aunt Helen’s blue eyes studied us both, and she seemed reluctant to reply. “Well, his name was Landers, and he was an embalmer. She worked for him a while, but I don’t know for how long. He offered her a little house at the back of his property where she could live for free if she’d do some cooking and cleaning for him. She went to work there so you’d have a nice, safe place to play, Annie.”

  “I grew up with the Landers name. Does that mean he adopted me after he and Regina got married?”

  Aunt Helen leaned back and studied a cow looking at us over the fence. She was hesitating again. Gee, this just got worse and worse. “Tell me the rest of it, Aunt Helen, please. Did he adopt me? Where is he now?”

  “The fact is, dear, your mother never married him. She just worked for him.”

  “But I thought they were married. I had his name.”

  �
�Regina didn’t marry him. She just told everybody up here she did, including her sister. She was ashamed and didn’t want her family to know you were born illegitimately, so she took his name for the both of you. No one was ever the wiser after Landers died in a fire, and even before that, because apparently, the man was a recluse his entire life.”

  “Oh, my God, I can’t believe this.”

  “Then your mother just up and disappeared one day. Regina went outside one night to smoke a cigarette after she put you to bed and just vanished into thin air. Thank God, her sister, Kathy, took you in.”

  Black said, “Do you think Regina deserted Claire?”

  “No, never. She loved you more than life itself, Annie. She would never have left you alone like that. There was foul play involved, but the police never figured out what happened to her.”

  I said, “What about my brother?”

  For the first time, Aunt Helen looked nonplused. “Regina never had a son. Just you, Annie. You were her whole life.”

  “But I remember him; I know I do. And his name was Thomas.”

  Helen shook her head. “I don’t know who you’re thinking of. Regina never had another child.”

  Black said, “So this embalmer, Doctor Landers, died in a fire. Do you know what caused the fire?”

  She shook her head. “Regina told me that he was very weird and strange acting. Lived in a spooky old house and did his embalming in the basement. Maybe the chemicals he used caught fire, or something like that. Regina said he drank too much whiskey.”

  I kept trying to remember any of the things she was telling us about, but I couldn’t. It seemed impossible. “Are you sure there wasn’t a little boy that lived with us or played with me? I remember him. I know I do.”

  “Well, you know, now that I think on it, Regina did tell me once that Doctor Landers had a son. That’s right. She went on a bit about what a peculiar boy he was, always whispering and sneaking around. She said he gave her the creeps, but you might’ve played with him, Annie. I bet he’s the child you remember.”

  “Did she call him Thomas?”

  “I just don’t remember.”

  I waited, growing anxious and resisting the urge to pace. “Please try to think.”

  Aunt Helen shut her eyes a moment; then she said, “I just don’t know his name, but I seem to recall that he had a nickname, and it was something bad, like Snot or Jerk or something. No, I think it was Brat that they called him. Regina said Landers and the boy were both so strange that she finally quit working there and went back to cook at the soup kitchen.”

  Black said, “Claire, it’s understandable that you thought Thomas was your brother, especially if your mother took the Landers name and told everybody she married the man.”

  “I guess so. I’m not sure about anything anymore.”

  “Is there anything else you can think of that might help us, Mrs. Wakefield?”

  “I know she’s not a jinx, like she thinks.”

  “A jinx?” Black said.

  “Yes, that’s why Annie wouldn’t stay here for long, afraid something terrible would happen to me if she did. Of course, that’s a bunch of hooey. So I suspect she’ll try to push you away, too, especially since she obviously likes you. I hope you won’t let that happen, Doctor, not if you truly want to help her.”

  “I’m not easily pushed around.”

  Still reeling from the revelations about my past, I listened to them talk around me, glad when my cell phone rang. I took it and walked a few feet out into the yard. Behind me, on the porch, Aunt Helen said, “She needs somebody with the training to really help her deal with all the losses in her life. She hates doctors, you know.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “That’s probably because after Zachary died, her captain at the LAPD kept sending her to the police psychologists, and she hated them and said they were all quacks.”

  Nothing like having your soul stripped bare and flogged to death right in front of your face. I usually do pretty well until somebody mentions Zack, then I fall apart unless I push the memory down deep in the dark, where I don’t have to deal with it. There are some things I have to keep buried if I want to survive, despite what Black thinks. It was going to take me a lot of time to sort through all this. I almost dreaded answering the phone for fear it was just the next piece of horrible news crouching in wait for me.

  It was Bud. “Hey, Morgan. Where the hell are you?”

  “Hartville, believe it or not.”

  “Thought you could use some good news for a change, so I gave you a buzz.”

  “You are so right on. Tell me quick.”

  “Charlie’s thinking about reinstating you, so get your butt back home and wait for my call.”

  “What changed his mind?”

  “I’ll tell you when I give you back your badge and weapon. Just get back up here ASAP and stay close to your phone.” Then he was gone.

  I walked back to the porch, feeling like a brand-new person, with a spring in my step. Even the shock of Aunt Helen’s revelations faded at the prospect of getting back to work. I couldn’t quit smiling. “Gotta go, Black. Charlie’s having a change of heart, and I just might be back on the job before the day’s out.”

  “That’s great,” Black said with zero enthusiasm.

  Aunt Helen, on the other hand, hugged me warmly and told me how happy she was that I was going back on duty. Then she said softly, so Black wouldn’t hear, “I’m sorry I kept all this from you, Annie. I thought it was for the best; I really did.”

  “It doesn’t make that much difference, but I’d like to know more about my real dad someday.”

  “I’ll find out everything I can about him and call you,” she said.

  Black said, “Mrs. Wakefield, I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve helped us a great deal. If you remember anything else, will you call me? I can give you a number where I can be reached at any time.”

  “Well, I guess you’re going to gloat and be obnoxious,” I said to Black after we’d left Aunt Helen and climbed back into the chopper.

  He concentrated on adjusting his headset and strapping himself in. He handed me my seat belt. “I like your Aunt Helen. She’s good people.”

  “Yeah, so what do you make of all this? It seems pretty strange to me, especially the fact that Helen kept it from me all these years. I don’t understand that.”

  “She probably meant well. But something doesn’t sit right about that guy Landers and his boy.”

  “What difference does it make? I’m just glad he’s not my father if he was that weird. He’s dead, anyway.”

  “I still want Booker to check it out, see if the boy’s alive somewhere. This time I’m asking your permission first. What do you say?”

  “Do whatever you want. All I care about is getting back to work. Let’s go.”

  Black took the controls, and as we lifted off and scared the hell out of Aunt Helen’s cows again, I lifted my hand in farewell. Aunt Helen stood waving good-bye beside the fence, her dress whipping around in the wash of the rotors, her other hand holding down her blowing hair.

  28

  We made it back to Cedar Bend ahead of a massive storm front that promised strong wind and rain from the thunderheads building in great blue-black mounds over the entire south end of the lake. The air was heavy with humidity and full of the smell of rain and heat and ozone. I sat outside on Black’s balcony, with my cell phone on the table right in front of me, and tried to will it to ring. Black was inside his office, canceling some appointments so he could keep me company. I told him not to, that I wasn’t going to be staying much longer, but he ignored me, as usual.

  I had crime scene pictures spread out in front of me and was trying to read through the reports Dottie had brought over, but all I really wanted was to hear the “Mexican Hat Dance” song. When it finally started up, I grabbed for the phone so fast, I almost knocked it off the table.

  “It’s a go, Morgan. I’ll pick you up at your house in th
irty minutes, weapon and badge in hand. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  I smiled, absolutely ecstatic, until Black walked outside and I saw the expression on his face.

  He said, “I take it that was Bud.”

  “Yes. I’m meeting him at my house in half an hour. I’m now officially reinstated.”

  “Congratulations.” Again, he clearly wasn’t thrilled out of his mind at my good fortune.

  I changed the subject. “I’ve been going over the crime scene reports Dottie left, trying to find something that ties them all together.”

  Black changed it back. “I guess this means you’re shoving off?”

  Yeah, that pretty much was what it meant, so I began to gather up the papers strewn all over the table. I spent some time stacking them all nice and neat and orderly and not looking at Black.

  I hesitated, feeling guilty somehow. Then I decided to just get it over with. “Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I really do. I was wrong about you from the beginning, but it might be better to cool it between us as long as I’m working on this case.”

  “So that’s it? Tough luck, Black. Nice meeting you, but I don’t need you anymore, so kiss off.”

  “Don’t make this difficult. I’m going to concentrate on solving Sylvie’s murder. That’s the best thing I can do for us—find the killer and bring him in—and then we’ll see where we stand. Next time they could pull my badge for real. Surely, you understand that?”

  “And I’m supposed to sit here and do nothing until you decide if you want to come around again?”

  “I guess that’s about it. Let the police handle it. I’ll keep you informed.”

  Black stared hard at me for a moment, then said, “Okay, Claire, if that’s the way you want it. Let me know if you need my help on anything else. Take one of my Cobalts home. It’ll outrun any reporters following you.”

  First, I was surprised, then relieved that he didn’t plan to cause some kind of ugly, recriminating scene.

  “Okay, I’ll leave these reports here for you if you want. Thanks for lending me the boat. Thanks for everything; I mean it.”