One Last Look

by Linda Lael Miller

  “You still have a job, Esperanza,” I assured her.

  Sonterra rounded the table and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Nobody’s going to send you back,” he told her. “But if you know anything else, it’s really important that you tell us.”

  She shook her head. “I do not know more,” she said earnestly. “When Father Morales shot, I am so scared. I panic. I think, maybe coyotes find out somehow. Remember us, Maria and me.”

  I got up, filled the teakettle, and plugged it in to boil. Esperanza definitely needed a little TLC. I thought back, as I worked, to the way she’d crossed herself repeatedly the day I hired her and often since. It must have been almost more than she could do just to enter that house again after the experience she’d had.

  Sonterra broke the bad news. “You might have to testify in court,” he told Esperanza. “Do you understand what that means?”

  She nodded. Smiled. “I watch Court TV sometimes, at neighbor’s place,” she said.

  Sonterra and I both laughed, and, after a moment of hesitation, Esperanza joined in.

  “I really think you deserve a day off with pay,” Sonterra told her, a few minutes later, as she sipped her tea. I agreed, and on his way back to work, he dropped Esperanza off at the Hidy Tidy.

  I was relieved when Loretta finally turned up at the front door half an hour later, because my mind was going about ninety miles an hour, and I needed a distraction, but my delight faded a little when I got a good look at her face.

  “What?” I asked anxiously.

  Loretta swallowed visibly and leaned to give each of the dogs a halfhearted pat on the head. “Kip pleaded guilty this morning, to avoid a trial. He’s on his way to a minimum-security place in Connecticut. Twelve months.”

  I steered her into the living room, sat her down, and perched on one arm of the sofa. “Oh, Loretta,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It happens.”

  “It shouldn’t have. Not to you.”

  “I’ll deal with it, Clare.”

  “How?”

  She blinked back tears and tried hard to smile. “I guess I’ll get by with a little help from my friends,” she said.

  “Count on it,” I told her.

  I missed the Monday morning staff meeting entirely. Dave Rathburn’s funeral was held a few days later, in the high school auditorium in Dry Creek. Madge didn’t attend, since she was still in the hospital, nor did her sons, but the FBI was well represented, and just about everyone else in the community showed up, too, including a large contingent of Latinos. I figured a lot of them just wanted to make sure old Deputy Dave was in the box.

  I know that was my motive.

  “They’re still out there,” I said afterward, thinking of Suzie, when we were alone in Sonterra’s SUV. “The people who hurt her are still out there.”

  “I’ll get them, Clare,” Sonterra promised. “If it’s the last goddamned thing I do, I will get them.”

  “Danielle may already be dead, like Micki and Dr. Holliday,” I mused on, not really expecting any immediate input from Sonterra. “But where the hell is Bobby Ray Lombard?”

  The ballistics report on Dave Rathburn’s gun had come back from the FBI lab early that morning, and so had the ID on Oz Gilbride. His had definitely been one of the skeletons secreted in our basement. And either Deputy Dave had been loaning out his Glock, or he’d executed Jimmy and the four other coyote victims in the desert, too. The striation marks on the slugs recovered from the bodies were exact duplicates.

  “Madge hasn’t issued a statement?” I ventured, watching Sonterra out of the corner of one eye. I’d tried to visit her once or twice, but the nurses wouldn’t let me in. Suzie was still unconscious, and holding on by a thread.

  Sonterra’s jaw worked. “Let it go, Clare. For five minutes, just let it go.”

  “I can’t.” Furious sorrow rose in my throat, sticking there like a clump of cactus spears. “Suzie could die, and even if she survives, she’s going to be traumatized, maybe for life. Somebody is responsible for that, and I want to know who it was. I want Robeson to prosecute them from here to the Needle Room.”

  “And you think I don’t want the same thing?”

  I sighed, rubbed my right temple with my fingertips.

  “Clare?”

  I gave in. “I know you do. It’s just hard to be patient, that’s all.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  I drew in a deep, restorative breath, and released it slowly. “What now?”

  “I’m taking you home.”

  My body was willing, but my mind wanted to push. “Have you and Timmons even looked for Danielle and Lombard?”

  “We’ve been a little busy,” Sonterra pointed out.

  I had to concede that one. “It bugs the hell out of me. I’m positive I know her, but I still can’t figure out where from. Loretta suggested that Danielle and I might have been in the same foster home.”

  “Try the Internet,” Sonterra said. “With your connection to Robeson’s office, you ought to be able to get into county files.”

  I nodded. The stuff my boss had given me to do so far was pretty easy. With Lombard still at large, I was at loose ends. Loretta had flown back East the day before to visit her husband at Camp Cush, and I missed her with a vengeance. Esperanza wasn’t a lot of company, and Emma was in school all day. I was going to be alone a lot, for the time being at least, and all of a sudden, I hated the idea.

  As soon as we got home, Sonterra changed out of his suit and into a uniform, and left me to my own devices. I swapped my black dress for sweats and sneakers, let the dogs have a supervised run in the backyard, and slapped together a quick lunch for all three of us. They had kibbles, I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

  With a cup of herbal tea close at hand, I settled into my chair in the study and logged on to the computer. Thanks to the inveterately sentimental, there are thousands of remember-when sites, clogged with goofy school pictures.

  I started with first grade.

  No sign of Danielle, but there I was, small and unsmiling in one of my sister’s hand-me-down dresses, eyes already shadowed with defiance.

  I felt a twinge of grief.

  Around sixth grade, I got bored with my own image and tapped into Child Protective Services. After wandering through a cyber maze—I didn’t need my county credentials, since a former client, David Valardi, had shown me how to hack with relative impunity—I opened my records, hoping to find a list of the foster homes I’d passed through on the rocky road to Gram’s double-wide.

  I found them, but I found something else, too.

  Something that made my tailbone tingle. My birth certificate.

  It took me a second or two to realize that it wasn’t the same one I had tucked away in the file cabinet.

  I stared at the cyber version of the document, confused and very uneasy. I guess my subconscious mind had already picked up on the discovery I was about to make.

  The information was typewritten.

  Name, date and time of birth, weight and length. The usual. But in the slot for comments, someone had scrawled, in tiny letters I had to squint to see, Surviving twin.

  I sat back in the chair with all the force of someone who’s just been slapped across the face.

  “‘Surviving twin’?”

  Waldo, lying at my feet, looked up at me in one-eyed wonder.

  I was a twin?

  Mom had never mentioned that, nor had Tracy or Gram, though they might not have known. I wanted to call someone, demand an answer, but there was no one to call. Emma and I were the last of our noble line.

  I leaned forward again, my nose a few inches from the monitor screen, found the attending physician’s name, and scribbled it on a notepad.

  John C. McVere.

  What were the chances he was still in practice, after more than thirty years? He could easily be dead.

  I reached for the phone, called information in Tucson.

  “John C. McVere,” the operato
r repeated thoughtfully.

  “M.D.,” I specified.

  “I’m sorry. There’s no listing under that name.”

  “Any other McVeres?”

  “Cynthia P.,” came the reply, reverberating with good-natured patience. “Would you like that number?”

  “Please,” I said, trying not to be terse. The woman was only doing her job—it wasn’t her fault that I’d just found out I was living in a bad soap opera.

  “I could connect you. Of course there would be an additional charge.”

  “Do it.” So much for not being terse.

  One ring. Two. Half a dozen. Then, just as I was about to hang up, an elderly woman answered with a teetery, “Hello?”

  “Mrs. McVere?”

  “Miss McVere.” A prim emphasis on the “Miss.”

  “You wouldn’t by chance be related to a Dr. John C. McVere?”

  Definite chill. “Who’s calling, please?”

  I summoned up a telephone smile and a lawyer’s line. “I’m sorry. My name is Clare Westbrook. I’m doing some research, and Dr. McVere is listed on my birth certificate as the attending physician. I’d like to ask him some questions.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Mrs. Westbrook,” Miss McVere told me. “My father died eight years ago.”

  “I don’t suppose you still have his records?”

  “Heavens, no,” she replied. “He was in practice for half a century. His files would fill the house.”

  “I see,” I said. “Thank you, Miss McVere. Sorry to bother you—”

  “Of course there is the microfilm,” she said.

  My voice came out as a croak. “The microfilm?”

  “Papa was ahead of his time. He always planned to write a memoir someday. God bless him, he never got around to it. But I know he had some of his charts put on film. My brother Charles was in charge of the family archives.” She gave a slight sniff. “He’s dead, too,” she went on, without the regret she’d shown for her father’s demise, “but his widow, Helga, might have the films. She holds on to everything, just in case there might be a nickel in it somewhere. I don’t have her number, but it’s probably listed. Let’s see—Harry came after my dear brother, and then Ross—”

  I waited, literally on the edge of my chair.

  “Jasper. That’s it. Clyde Jasper. He owns a wrecking yard in Gila Bend. I wouldn’t have thought he’d be her type, but then, he is a junkman.” She gave a bitter, crackly little chuckle.

  I smiled, scribbling. “Thanks, Miss McVere. Thank you very much.”

  She hung up in my ear.

  I immediately called information again. There was no private listing, just one for Jasper Scrap Iron and Car Parts. Gila Bend isn’t exactly a metropolis, so I felt that small, quivery thrill in the pit of my stomach that usually means one of two things—I’m on the verge of an important discovery, or someone is about to go for my jugular. On occasion, it’s both.

  Mr. Jasper, the proprietor himself, answered on the third ring, barking out the name of his business. Either it was a bad day in the Bend, or he was inherently cranky.

  “Mr. Jasper, my name is Clare Westbrook, and I’m actually looking for your wife—er—Helga?”

  “I know my wife’s name,” he snarled. “And I’m trying to do taxes, here. Damn government. Take, take, take, that’s all they do. A man works hard and what does he get for it? Penalties. Surcharges. They’re all the same—Republicans, Democrats. Bunch of moneygrubbing bastards—”

  “Is Helga around? I checked with information, but they didn’t have a home number.”

  “That’s because we don’t have a phone over to the house. Helga runs up the bill, calling those foreigner relatives of hers. My guess is, she’s down at the casino right now, poking the grocery money into the slot machines. Likes the Double Diamonds.”

  I smiled to myself. Poor Helga. If she’d married Clyde Jasper for his money, as her former sister-in-law seemed to believe, she’d made a bad bargain. “I see,” I said warmly. “Does Helga carry a cell phone, by any chance?”

  “Like I’d let her have one in a million years. Them things can run ten dollars a minute and up when you’re calling overseas.” He paused, and I could almost hear the gears shifting in his head. Now that Clyde had poured out his disenchantment with the government, foreign relatives, phone bills, and slot machines, he wasn’t going to be so forthcoming. “What do you want to talk to her about, anyways? I don’t even know who you are.”

  I repeated my name and explained carefully, without too much detail, that I’d heard Helga might have Dr. McVere’s medical records, and I was hoping mine, or my mother’s, might be among them.

  “She’s got all kinds of stuff stashed in a storage unit outside of town,” Clyde allowed. “Do you know what those places charge? Highway robbery.”

  “They are expensive,” I agreed mildly. “I wonder if you would ask Helga to call me? Collect, of course.”

  More suspicion. The avaricious kind. “You writing a book or something?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Because if you are, Helga’s got a right to some of the money. That doctor should have left her fixed, but she didn’t get much.”

  “I’m not writing a book,” I said quietly. “But if the records I want are there, I would be happy to pay for them.”

  “How much?”

  I picked a figure out of thin air and hoped it would fly. “Five hundred dollars,” I said. Money wasn’t an issue with me, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be fleeced.

  “She’ll call you,” Clyde said with certainty. “Whose file are you looking for again?”

  “Anybody named Westbrook. Specifically, Vanessa or Clare.”

  “How do you spell that?”

  I spelled, and gave Clyde both my cell and landline numbers.

  After I disconnected, I sat still, stunned by the twists life can take. Then the reality of Suzie’s situation caught up with me again, and I reached for the phone, to keep it at bay for another few minutes.

  “Hello?” Mrs. K answered, sounding worried. “Clare, is this you? Are you in trouble?”

  “I’m not in trouble,” I said quickly. Of course, that had a way of changing from moment to moment, but it just so happened that nobody was holding a gun to my head, so I considered it a truthful answer. “But I just learned that I might have been a twin. Am I crazy, or could that have something to do with—well—seeing myself?”

  Mrs. K drew in a sharp breath. “Has it happened again?”

  “No,” I hastened to say. “I guess I’m just grasping at straws, here. Trying to find an explanation for something that can’t be explained—”

  My friend was quiet for a long time. “I hear little Suzie Post isn’t doing very well,” she said. “I’m sorry, Clare.”

  “Does that mean you think she’ll—that she won’t make it?”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. K said sadly. “I can’t always see clearly.”

  The muscles in my nape knotted, and I rubbed my temple again, trying to keep it together. “What if she dies?”

  “No one really dies, Clare,” Mrs. K said gently.

  Tears sprang to my eyes. “It sure as hell looks that way from here,” I said.

  “I know. But your little friend might not choose to stay, and you should be prepared for that. She may decide to go on, and be with her mother.”

  Sometimes, kindness breaks down my defenses. “That would be terrible.”

  “For you, and for the others she would leave behind, yes. But not for her. Don’t hold on to her, Clare.”

  I wiped away my tears with the back of one hand. It was a weak moment. Report me to the spine police. “Why is there so much tragedy? Why is the world such a brutal place?”

  I’m not psychic, but I could tell that Mrs. K was choosing her words. “Perhaps because you see it that way,” she said softly and at considerable length. “We attract what’s inside us, dear.”

  I didn’t speak. I wasn’t exac
tly offended, but I wasn’t inspired, either. And I certainly wasn’t comforted. But it was true that I’d been in street-fight mode ever since I could remember.

  “I know, I know,” Mrs. K said with a sigh, as if I’d spoken aloud. “I’ve told you over and over again that you’re in danger. What I should have said was, ‘look into your heart.’ Look, Clare, as deeply as you can. Somewhere in yourself, you’ve taken the offensive. Perhaps the universe is merely giving you what you’ve come to expect.”

  I bit my lip. My instinctive response was, I didn’t call for a bunch of New Age mumbo jumbo. But I had called to ask if I was being haunted by my unborn twin.

  “You’re angry,” Mrs. K prodded quietly.

  “Confused,” I countered.

  “Think about it,” my friend said. “I’ll get back to you on the twin question. I need to meditate and do some”—she paused, chuckled—“New Age mumbo jumbo.”

  I’d had a number of similar experiences with Mrs. K, but she could still catch me off guard. I gasped.

  “How do you do that? Read people’s minds, I mean?”

  She laughed, a little ruefully, I thought. “I wish I knew,” she said. “Then maybe I could turn it off and live like a normal woman.”

  “How does a ‘normal woman’ live?”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. K replied succinctly. “I’ve never met one.”

  My mind shifted back to Danielle Bickerhelm, and our connection, whatever it was. I decided to run it by my personal swami and gave her a brief recap.

  “Foster home,” Mrs. K said, barely missing a beat. “Green house, white shutters. Black spaniel. She went by another name then and had a fixation about reincarnation. You’ll have to take it from there. I’m due at Wal-Mart.”

  I blinked, flipping through the mental files. Before I went to live with Gram, I’d lived in a lot of places, with a blur of people.

  Green house.

  Black spaniel.

  Another name.

  I mumbled my thanks and a good-bye and hung up. There was too much to think about, including the fact that I’d have to tell Sonterra about seeing myself one of these days. I’d use the twin news as a segue.

  “I need a nap,” I told Waldo and Bernice.