by David Bell
I leaned back a little and read the story. The police reiterated that they weren’t ready to call the missing girl the victim of a crime. In fact, this story reported that the girl’s father, Gordon Baxter, had informed them that the girl was “troubled” and “high-spirited.”
High-spirited? I knew what that meant. It was code for “strong-willed girl.” Not only could Gordon not control his daughter, he couldn’t even begin to understand her. So he labeled her a troublemaker in the newspaper, for all to see. The article ended with Gordon saying, “She started to run with a bad crowd. Maybe she just didn’t want to be here anymore.”
So the consensus had been reached even back then, from her father—Mom wasn’t quoted in the article—as well as the police: Elizabeth Baxter had run away. But Gordon insisted to me that she had been killed, probably by some serial killer the state had put to death. I remembered the name: Rodney Ray Brown.
I took out my phone and searched the Web. I entered “Rodney Ray Brown” along with “Elizabeth Baxter.” Just a few hits came up. One of them was from a Web site devoted to serial killers. A small note at the end of the entry on Brown mentioned that he was suspected in more killings, and it listed Elizabeth’s name as one of the possibilities. Beyond that, little seemed to tie the two together. Brown had killed in Ohio and Indiana during the 1970s. Elizabeth had run off in Ohio during the 1970s. That was about it.
“Who’s that?”
I jumped. Mrs. Porter had managed to sneak up on me and was looking over my shoulder. I reached for the on/off switch.
“Is that your mother?” she asked.
“It’s—”
I don’t know how bad her eyesight was, or whether she just didn’t look closely enough to see the headline, but she patted me on the shoulder and said, “It’s amazing how much you two look alike.”
Chapter Forty-two
My phone rang just as I was leaving the library. My heart jolted. I’d told myself to expect the same shock every time the phone rang while Ronnie was in the hospital. Any call coming in could be good or bad news.
But it wasn’t Paul. Or the hospital. And it wasn’t even Dan.
“Hello?”
“Elizabeth,” he said.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“It’s Gordon Baxter.”
“How did you get this number?” I asked.
“You gave it to me before you left McDonald’s. Remember?”
I thought about it. I might have. Those moments were a blur.
“You were upset when you left, Elizabeth.”
Just hearing him say that name gave me the creeps. He had called his daughter that name all those years ago. He might have even wept while he said that name or dreamed about her and called her name in his sleep. To have him call me by that name—even though it was my name—added a layer of weirdness to the whole enterprise.
“What do you want?”
“I hope your brother is okay,” he said.
“He’s okay.”
I didn’t like the idea of revealing anything to this man about my family, even though it was apparent he already knew far more about my family than I did. In a way, he was part of my family, whether I liked it or not.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. His voice sounded oily and insincere, even more than it had in the restaurant. I’d have to wipe the slimy residue of his voice off my ear. “I know our conversation got cut short earlier, so I was just calling to see if you had talked to Paul.”
“As you can imagine, we were a little more concerned about my brother’s health than your story.”
“Oh,” he said, sounding almost surprised not to be the center of attention.
“I talked to Paul,” I said, “and maybe he did confirm some aspects of your story.”
“See?” He sounded very pleased with himself.
“Yeah. I guess I’m still wondering what you want from me. Are you still asking me for money?”
“We didn’t really get to finish our discussion.”
“Right. You said you’d had some ups and downs. Some bad luck, as you put it.”
“Health problems too. I have a heart condition. A lot of medication.”
“Does your bad luck also involve being in jail?” I asked. “I understand that was part of it.”
I heard his breathing through the phone. It was heavy, but not from exertion. It sounded like the low huffing of an animal, the rhythm of a predator gathering his strength.
“That would be your uncle talking,” he said.
“It would be.”
“Well, he has his own side of the story to tell. Don’t we all?”
“I think I need to go, Mr. Baxter. As you can imagine, I have a lot of other things on my mind right now.”
“So your answer is no?”
“I don’t know why my mom gave you money, but I can’t afford to. I have a brother to take care of. I just became his guardian, and that’s enough for me. If you don’t mind—”
“You’re the guardian?” Gordon asked. He sounded surprised and knowing at the same time.
“I am. It’s in the will.”
“Hmm,” he said.
I expected him to say more, but he didn’t. He just left the conversation hanging there. I was tempted to hang up, but I also wanted to see how this would play out.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“I thought for sure your uncle would be the guardian,” he said.
“I thought so too,” I said. “But he’s getting older. Mom was worried about having someone here for Ronnie, someone who would be here a long time.”
Gordon made a low, dismissive sound—the beginning of a laugh, bitten off and truncated.
“You’re such a good girl,” he said. “Believing whatever they tell you to believe.”
“What do you mean—?”
Without saying anything more, he hung up.
• • •
Since the police station was so close to the library, I took a chance and stopped by there, hoping to find Richland or Post hanging around. The station was quiet. It was getting on toward sundown, and I supposed the Saturday evening mayhem hadn’t kicked in. Everyone was resting up and saving their craziness for later.
The desk officer seemed indifferent to my presence and mustered a halfhearted “Help you?” when I stepped up. I asked for either one of the detectives and the desk officer asked me the nature of my problem.
I decided to use my mother’s death—murder—for whatever it was worth. If I was going to be the victim of a crime and be seen that way by the world, I might as well take advantage of that status when it could do me some good.
“They’re investigating my mother’s death,” I said. “Leslie Hampton? She was murdered a week ago.”
The invocation injected some life into the officer’s movements. His neck straightened and his eyes opened wider. “Did they ask you to meet them here?”
“No,” I said. “I called them. I wanted to see if they were in.”
“You called them here?”
“Cell phone,” I said. “Is one of them here or not?”
“I doubt they’re in today,” he said. “It’s Saturday, and I haven’t seen them. I can leave them a note, or you can call them back. Or you can talk to someone else.”
“Might they be back there?” I asked, tilting my head in the direction of the door behind him.
He stared at me for a long moment, as though considering whether to get up and look for the detectives or not.
I decided to give him a little push. “I have information for them about my mother’s case.”
He nodded. “Okay. I’ll check. But if they’re not here, you have to talk to someone. You can’t let that information go.”
He went into the back, letting the heavy wooden door swing shut behind him. I felt tired. It had already been a long day. A long week. My neck hurt and my eyes felt as if they’d been scrubbed with sandpaper. I remembered that I hadn’t showered, that my body had taken
on that greasy, gritty feel of not having been washed. I surely smelled.
The door opened again, and the officer held it open for me. “You’re in luck,” he said. It was a strange turn of phrase to direct at someone whose mother had been murdered, and the officer seemed to realize that as the words came out of his mouth. A flush rose on his cheeks and he looked at the floor. “I mean, Detective Post is back here, and she wants you to talk to her.”
• • •
Post sat at her desk typing on her computer. She didn’t look up as I approached; she appeared to be getting down one last thought before she stopped. I reached the side of her desk and waited. I knew she sensed me there, and she hit the last key with more force than normal, the punctuation to something important. Then she stood up and reached out to shake my hand.
“Hello, Elizabeth,” she said.
It always felt weird for me to shake another woman’s hand. But I didn’t want to hug her or peck her on the cheek either. A handshake would have to do. My hand felt small in hers.
She pointed to a chair, and I sat. Post was wearing jeans and black boots. The sleeves of her navy blue shirt were pushed up to her elbows. She smelled good. Unlike me.
“I was going to call you back,” she said. “I got your message. I just wanted to finish here.” She pointed to the computer screen.
“Paperwork?” I asked.
“School,” she said. “I’m getting a master’s in criminology. Sometimes I study here on Saturdays because it feels like a place to get business done. You know, I can’t just turn on the TV. Or talk to my boyfriend.”
It was the most personal conversation we’d had. The notion that she led a life, that she had friends or parents or pets, hadn’t really occurred to me. I wanted something very simple from her: to make sense of my mother’s death, preferably in a way that didn’t land my brother in jail.
“Right,” I said. “Well, I’m sorry to just barge in on you like this. And I’m sorry to call you when you’re off.”
“It’s no problem,” she said. “The officer who showed you back said you had some information you wanted to share about your mother’s case.”
“I do,” I said.
“By the way,” Post said, “how is your brother doing?”
“He’s in ICU right now. I guess I’ll be going back later—”
“ICU? What do you mean?”
“At the hospital,” I said. “He’s at St. Vincent’s Hospital. He tried to kill himself earlier today.”
Post’s mouth opened. I saw her white teeth, a flash of dental work. She was silent a moment, then said, “Are you kidding me? I’m so sorry.”
“No. I figured they would have called you. Both of you.”
Post turned and reached for her cell phone. She checked it, shaking her head, then set the phone back down. “They didn’t call both of us,” she said, still shaking her head. “They called one of us. And he didn’t tell me.” She used her thumbs to send a quick text. Then she put the phone facedown on the desk and asked me to explain what had happened. I did, sparing no details about Ronnie’s suicide attempt. Post didn’t take notes, but she seemed absorbed by what I told her. As I spoke, her cell phone buzzed, but she ignored it and asked a few follow-up questions about Ronnie’s condition and his state of mind the last time I saw him before the attempt.
Once I’d told her everything—which wasn’t much—she picked up the phone. Whatever she read there didn’t make her any happier. If head shaking were an Olympic sport, she’d take the gold.
“Is that what you wanted to tell me about?” she asked. “Your brother’s suicide attempt?”
“No, it really isn’t,” I said. “I wanted to tell you about a few other things. Should I be telling them to both of you?”
“No,” she said. She clamped her lips tight. I saw the muscles in her neck clench as well. “You can tell me, and I’ll share the information with my partner.”
“Okay,” I said. I trusted Post more than Richland. I liked her. She maintained some semblance of a professional wall, but she also came out from behind it from time to time. I sensed she was doing that then. “I found out that my mother was married once before,” I said. “Her first husband came by to talk to me.”
Post tilted her head a little. “What do you mean, ‘found out’?”
“He told me all about it,” I said.
“But you didn’t know that before?”
“No, I didn’t. Did you?”
Post looked uncomfortable, as if maybe she’d sat on a nail. “We do background checks on anyone who has been the victim of a crime like the one involving your mother. It’s standard procedure during the investigation. We saw that she had married this—” She leaned forward and opened a manila folder, leafed through a few pages. “Gordon Baxter? Is that the man you spoke to?”
I nodded.
“She was married to him for a while,” she said. “And he came to see you? Why? How did he find you?”
“I’m in the book.”
“You know—”
I held up my hand. “I know, I know. It doesn’t matter. He found me. I didn’t let him in. We talked in public.”
“You should probably avoid contact with him in the future.” Post reached for the folder again. She brought it back and opened it in her lap.
“My uncle says he’s a crook.”
Post nodded. “He’s done time for larceny and assault. Make that twice for assault. And these are just things he’s been convicted of. Chances are there’s more. He didn’t threaten you at all, did he?”
I considered the word. Threaten. He didn’t threaten me. But…
“He wants money from me.”
“For what?”
“He says my mother was giving him money, helping him out. Now he wants me to keep doing it. I’m the executor of the estate. My mother got some money when my father died. A life insurance policy. And I’m sure there’s a policy on my mom as well. Gordon Baxter wants some of whatever money my mom had.”
“How much?”
“He didn’t say. But I found my mom’s bank records in her house. She’d withdrawn fourteen thousand dollars over the last year. That’s totally unlike her. She wouldn’t even eat at a fast-food restaurant. She wore the same clothes for the last twenty years. I have no idea what she took that money out for.”
“But he didn’t threaten you?”
“No,” I said. “He didn’t say, ‘Give me the money or else.’ Nothing like that. He seems shady. In some way, his presence is threatening. He showed up out of the blue on my doorstep. I wondered if maybe he was the one who broke into my apartment.”
Post nodded. She made a note in the open file folder.
“But,” I said, “I can’t imagine what he’d be looking for there. I don’t have anything. And he doesn’t know anything about me.”
“I’ll keep it in the back of my mind,” she said.
Post’s phone buzzed again.
“Do you need to get that?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“So,” I said, “if you know all about her marriage to Gordon Baxter, you must know about their daughter, right?”
I knew professional police decorum meant never showing surprise when presented with unexpected information. Post mostly concealed her reaction, but her eyes moved just enough—a twitch or a tic—to tell me that she not only didn’t know about the other Elizabeth, but was quite surprised to hear it.
She didn’t answer. So I said, “You didn’t know, then? Wouldn’t you find out if you ran some sort of a background check on my mom?”
“A juvenile that long ago might not show up in the system. We haven’t had computers forever.”
“Okay. Well, now you know.”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure how it’s relevant to the case.”
“Not relevant?” I asked. “My mother’s ex-husband has a criminal record, and they also have a daughter who went missing years ago and now has managed to get herself into my mother’s will.
And that’s not relevant?”
Post considered a moment. She closed the folder in her lap and placed it back on the desk. “Is there something I need to know about this daughter?”
“A few things,” I said.
I gave her the whole rundown, from Elizabeth’s disappearance in 1975 to her apparent reemergence into my mother’s life sometime in the recent past. I made sure to include the stuff about the will, including Elizabeth Yarbrough’s call to the lawyer, as well as my uncle’s and Gordon Baxter’s assertions that Elizabeth Yarbrough was some kind of grifter taking advantage of my mother and not the rebellious teenager who walked out of their lives thirty-seven years earlier. Post asked a few questions as I went along, mostly just clarifications of minor points. She still didn’t take any notes, but she was attentive. When I was finished, she leaned back in her chair, the springs squeaking as she moved.
“You’ve never met this woman?” she asked. “This Elizabeth Yarbrough?”
“Never.”
“And where is she?”
“She lives in Reston Point, according to the will. That’s all I know.”
“Hmm,” Post said.
“Look, you’re trying to hang this all on my brother—”
“Nobody’s hanging anything,” she said. “We’re dealing with the evidence.”
“Okay. Fine. But you have someone with a criminal record who was getting money from my mother, and you have someone else—someone who was given up for dead long ago—suddenly showing up and working her way into the will. She gets a third now that Mom is gone. Are you telling me that isn’t suspicious?”
“One of your sources against this Yarbrough woman is the guy you also say is a crook. Gordon Baxter,” Post said. “Who knows why he’s smearing her? And you don’t know that this woman called the lawyer. And even if she did, I’m not sure what it proves. People call lawyers. Maybe it shows she was after the money. Maybe. But maybe she just had a legitimate question.”
I accepted the dousing of cold water. But I wasn’t finished. “At least admit it’s hard to believe Ronnie killed my mom. Can you just admit that for me?”
