Utah: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 7)

by J. J. Henderson

  Lucy tore through it. The article went on in the same vein, fleshing out what had emerged as the basic suspicion in the case, or at least as it was being presented to the public. Underneath was a large black and white photograph of Ellen that sat in the middle of the story, with the caption, Have you seen this girl? running beneath it. Fortunately her hair had still been its natural dark color when the picture was shot, so the resemblance didn't jump out as it otherwise might have. But it was still pretty obvious. Lucy looked at Ellen, and hissed softly. "What does this mean? What's the...Ellen, what happened back there in..."

  "Nothing, Lucy. I mean, I already told you...I don't know what...anything about this...I didn't stab him, it's..."

  Lucy's stomach dropped. "But it doesn't say anything about stabbing, Ellen," she said softly, picturing a hunting knife wrapped in a white towel in a green backpack. "Where does it say stabbing?"

  "Right there. I mean...I...I don't know," Ellen said.

  Lucy looked into her large, dark eyes. "We have to go. Now," Lucy said urgently, softly. "Get our stuff and the dog and as soon as Loretta comes in we have to go."

  "Right," Ellen said. Loretta appeared. Lucy casually lowered the paper. "Excuse me," Ellen said, and left the room.

  "So what do you propose to do?" Loretta asked.

  "I was just going to ask you the same thing," Lucy said, forcing a grin. "But you beat me to it. I propose that we call a truce, I'll make some dinner for us all, and maybe we can talk about it over a bottle of wine. What do you say?"

  "I still need to talk to her mother, truce or no truce," Loretta said. "But yes, let's do have dinner and talk about it." She put her keys down on the side table and went into the kitchen. Lucy grabbed the keys and headed out the door. Ellen was just putting Claud in the back of the van. Lucy hustled over and jumped in. She started up the car, cranked the wheel hard to the right, and drove across the lawn and off the curb. Ellen looked back.

  "She's on the porch watching us," she said. "Now she's run back into the house!"

  "It's OK," Lucy said, holding up the keys to the BMW. "She's not coming after us any time soon."

  "Yeah but what if she does what...what if she calls the cops?"

  "Don't worry, Ellen, I've got a plan."

  They left the van on a side street downtown. Lucy said goodbye to half a dozen boxes of books, clothes, and assorted stuff, and they walked to the bus station. She put the van keys and Loretta's keys in an envelope, addressed it to her mother, stamped it, and shoved it in a mailbox. She called Robin in Seattle, and then she and Ellen got on a northbound bus at four thirty in the afternoon. Lucy carried Ellen's green back pack, and the poodle secretly boarded in a carry-on they held between them. Claud knew when to keep his mouth shut. A few minutes later, as the bus rolled out of Portland, Lucy turned to her and said, "So. Tell me more."

  "Tell you..."

  "What happened, for God's sakes! The paper said he...your father...was dead. Did you...Jesus, Ellen, what happened? Just tell me you didn't do this..."

  Ellen shook her head, and looked down. "I can't, Lucy."

  Lucy looked around the bus. Nobody was paying any attention to them. "Oh my God, Ellen. How did it...what happened?"

  "I did it. I did it, Lucy. I didn't know what else to do and so I took the knife and when he was...in my room I...I stabbed him. I killed him. That's why I had to run away." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "It's on that DVD, Lucy. I taped it."

  They got off the bus in Tacoma, Washington a couple of hours later. Robin met them. By then, Lucy had found out one last thing from Ellen Longford: several months earlier she had been told by her father, one bleak and horrid night when he'd done having his way with her, that she had been adopted. It was his way of telling her, and himself, that what he did was somehow acceptable. It meant that strictly speaking—genetically speaking—hers would not be a child of incest.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LORETTA'S DILEMMA

  Hearing the squeal of tires Loretta ran to the front door and watched Lucy and Ellen race away. As the dog in the back seat gazed back at her, his dark eyes filled with what she imagined to be regret, Loretta felt no impulse to give chase, or to call the police, but rather, felt despair—despair that her first day with her sister had gone so badly after all the months she'd spent thinking and dreaming about it. Why had she come on so self-righteously? For all those months she had denied herself the pleasure of calling Lucy so that when they finally met it would be a real surprise; and she had planned the trip up—her first time away from Jeff and the kids for more than a weekend in nine years—without considering for a moment that something so painful might come between them. She guided her life by certain bedrock Christian principles, and these principles frequently had complicated her existence in surprising, difficult ways, but she had never encountered a situation so emotionally loaded as this one. Usually she could call on Jesus, or Jeff, and one or the other of them would offer guidance. Amidst the tangled confusion and doubt of everyday life the righteous path would appear, marked out by Jeff and illuminated by the words of Jesus, glowing like diamonds in the dark.

  Yet there in the middle of the path stood Ellen, carrying an innocent baby in her belly. And beside her, protecting her, Lucy, single and fierce, Loretta's own sister. Shocked and bewildered by their unexpected arrival at the clinic, Loretta had handled it badly, hiding behind her mask of radiant self-righteousness. She knew that her message, the only one she could possibly have delivered, for it was the Truth, represented nothing but a threat to them. Gathering with the zealots to intimidate sinners at the door of the abortion mill served to shame a few women out of their murderous plans—and Loretta felt no qualms about doing that—but it was no way to convert a woman like Lucy. Though she believed deeply in the morality of her position, Loretta had never before that moment allowed herself to consider the cruelty implicit in what she and her fellow Christians did outside those clinic doors. These things got complicated when they got personal. The strength of her moral position had grown from its purity. Faced for the first time with the simple fact of people she knew, people she maybe even loved, on the other side, this sense of purity was stained with doubt. She had to recognize the possibility that it was not possession of some absolute Truth but perhaps only a lack of loving sympathy for the living, for the pregnant children and their families and friends, that had fueled her self-righteousness.

  In the foyer she noticed her keys were missing. How had the level of mistrust gotten so high so fast? Loretta shook her head regretfully, wondering if it would be possible to save that girl's baby without losing her own sister. She found Althea sitting in the kitchen, calmly reading the paper. "They've gone," Loretta said.

  "Gone? Lucy?"

  "Yes. And Ellen."

  "What a day it's been! Where do you suppose they could have gone?" Althea said. Not that she needed an answer. She didn't yet know exactly why Lucy had been compelled to run, but she was pretty sure about where they'd gone, and she would keep it to herself, thank you. She had seen that front page story, and she had also seen enough of the war between these women. She knew now where her loyalties lay. She wasn't about to tell Loretta or any damn body else that came nosing around looking to make trouble for her Lucy.

  Loretta spoke softly. "I don't know, Althea. I wish I...Oh, Lord, I wish I...could start this day over, and..." she fell into silent prayer. Help me Jesus, help me find a way. Jesus told her to call Jeff. "Can I use your phone? I need to speak with my husband. I'll use a credit card."

  "Of course, Loretta. It's right there." She shook her head. "Lucy's always been a strong-minded girl," she said. "She always did what she wanted, right or wrong...but you know, I have to admit she was usually right in the end." That caught Loretta's attention, and they stared—glared—at each other. Loretta looked away.

  "Do you mind if I take the phone in the other room? I need to..."

  "Oh, I'll go, that's all right," said Althea. She left the room. Loretta punched in t
he numbers, all the while knowing exactly what he would say. Call the police, call the pro-life committee, get help, do what you must to save that baby, that's all that matters. Ask Jesus in your heart and he will tell you that it's true.

  "Finley Graves McManus. Can I help you?" Loretta hung up. She had done what he said. She asked Jesus, and He said hang up. This was not a matter for Jeffrey Graves, Christian activist, lawyer, husband. Jeffrey Graves, like most of the people they knew, was a solid, virtuous Christian man lacking the...what was it? Intellectual dexterity?...flexibility of faith?...to deal with people like Lucy, good souls who had not yet found their way onto the righteous path. Jesus on the other hand had the most flexible of minds, and the biggest of hearts, of all men that had ever existed. He alone would be the one to guide her.

  Jeff did not recently meet for the first time a long lost sister! Jeff did not know Lucy, he couldn't fathom her troubles, he couldn't possibly understand what was evident in Lucy's relationship with the pregnant girl. The girl, whose father was dead, who was the same age as Candace but lost, so lost...and yet she clearly trusted and depended on Lucy. Loretta could see that. But what had happened to her? Loretta had scanned the newspaper story. She had seen the front page picture of Ellen, and the story of her kidnapping and her father's death. She didn't know how it added up but she understood that Lucy was in trouble. Loretta knew that Lucy had lied to her, and yet beyond the lies she knew that Lucy had spoken a deeper truth. The abortion was an unsettled issue, but Loretta would do what she must to take care of that when the time came. She wouldn't hesitate to go up against Lucy on that. But what mattered at the moment was finding her sister, and letting her know she was not against her but with her in her struggle, whatever it may be. Loretta instinctively understood that Lucy was a good soul, and was doing what she felt was right. Loretta deeply resented, even loathed, the abortionists and their radical feminist supporters, but she could sense the honesty in everything Lucy had said to her. Even in the lies. This was not an abstraction, not one of the knife-wielding, blasphemous baby-killer cartoon monsters she had been sent to save, and to pity or loathe if they could not be saved. This was her sister!

  Loretta believed deeply in the truth of Jesus her Lord, but she was too smart to think that non-believers were incapable of Christian virtue; or that pro-choice people were ruled by evil. Lucy was not an evil soul. Nor was she a fool.

  Loretta went into Lucy's old room and knelt at the foot of the single bed. At the head, the picture of long-haired John Lennon in his late Beatle period looked down on her. She smiled secretly. Jeff would be appalled to see her on her knees before the man who'd once said, "We're more popular than Jesus now." Jeff was a good father and a good husband, but he didn't have much of a sense of humor, and he would not appreciate this irony. Candy would, though. Candy, their fifteen year old, had started playing Loretta's old Beatle records when she was twelve, and she was a die-hard Lennon fan. Loretta closed her eyes and opened her heart to Jesus, hoping that he would give her guidance, praying that he would tell her which way to turn. Instead "Hey Jude" came to mind, and she found herself murmuring the lyrics as they came flooding back to her on waves of melody. "Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start, to make it better..." The tears began flowing down her cheeks. She bowed her head and cried, praying for the girl and her unborn baby. She prayed for Lucy too; prayed that her sister would find her way out of the darkness into which she seemingly had been cast. But Lucy knew her way around out there in the darkness. Loretta could see that.

  Loretta went into the living room, folded up the sofa bed, and threw the newspapers in the trash. Althea didn't say a word. Loretta the lawyer felt like she was on trial.

  Assorted bureaucratic snafus and agency blunders put Larsen and Devereaux through what turned out to the longest short flight of their lives; and so, at the wheel of their government-issue sedan they arrived at the Ryder truck return lot at ten minutes to six pm, a couple of hours after Lucy had dropped her truck off. They made the manager keep the shop open while they quickly looked over the truck, but there was nothing to be gleaned. How Ripken could drive a giant yellow truck from Hood River to Portland without getting nailed was a mystery, a miracle attributable to grace and grace alone, for there was no reason she shouldn't have been stopped, questioned, arrested. Except that it just didn't happen. These post 9/11 days the fallibility of the FBI was in the air, part of the atmosphere, and arrests didn't happen with the cinematic smoothness that had once prevailed in the American dream of law enforcement. It was spotty, hit and miss, random, fucked-up. Not unlike modern crime in its unpredictability. They had a technician take some prints, which they assumed would belong to Ellen Longford and Lucy Ripken. And maybe with any luck there might be prints belonging to somebody else, the mystery man, the man who did the deed. Because they still could not find it in their hearts to believe that Ellen had killed her father, and they were fairly sure that Lucy hadn't done it, which left them with...an empty hole where a suspect ought to be.

  From the Ryder lot they headed straight to Lucy's mother's house. Her name was Althea Ripken, and she lived not far away in a working class neighborhood called the Lents District. They got there about seven pm. A white clapboard-finished house among many much the same. Modest workingman dwellings from a different time. A black, shiny new BMW that didn't belong in the neighborhood was parked in the driveway twenty feet behind an old American sedan sitting close to the open garage. The BMW sported a Jesus Fish on the back end and anti-abortion stickers on both bumpers. They parked on the street and walked up the driveway towards the house. Boxes were stacked along one side of the garage interior. A set of tire tracks curved off the driveway, across the lawn and sidewalk, and hit the street by way of the curb. Larsen got close enough to the boxes to see that they had all been neatly labelled with Lucy Ripken's name, and this, her mother's address.

  "Is it possible they're here, having cool drinks and visiting with her mummy?" said Larsen to Devereaux as they approached the house.

  "No doubt," said Devereaux. "And they've got the killer trussed in the basement with his confession on tape." He knocked on the door. They waited, then knocked again.

  Mrs. Ripken opened it after the third set of knocks. "Hello," she said. "Can I help you?"

  "Mrs. Althea Ripken?" said Larsen. "Good evening. We're agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My name is John Larsen and this is Morris Devereaux. We're here regarding the whereabouts of your daughter, Lucy Ripken, and a young woman traveling with her named Ellen Longford." Her expression didn't change.

  "Lucy wouldn't be here, would she?" said Devereaux, peering past her.

  "Lucy? Here. No, goodness no," said Mrs. Ripken. A younger woman appeared at her side. They hadn't rehearsed this, or even discussed it, but Althea Ripken knew that for whatever reasons the Lord had given her, in the time that passed since Lucy had fled Loretta had taken her side. "Loretta, these gentlemen are from the FBI. They're looking for Lucy. Oh, pardon me. Gentlemen, this is Loretta Graves, Lucy's sister. She's visiting from San Diego, California."

  "Have you seen Ms. Ripken, Miss Graves?" said Larsen.

  "That's Mrs. Graves," said Loretta. "Would you like to come in?"

  "Please," said Larsen. "Not to be rude but we are in something of a hurry. We're losing time. I know she's been here so why don't you dispense with the courtesies and just tell us where she's gone. Do you know what...What did Lucy tell you about the girl who was with her?"

  "Come in, come in," said Mrs. Ripken, leading the way. They followed. Loretta brought up the rear. "Terribly warm spring we're having. Would you like some iced tea?"

  "Please ma'am, you're trying our patience, and my partner here gets really...on'ry when he gets impatient," said Devereaux. They sat down edgily in the living room. Devereaux noticed a bedsheet peeking out of the sofa he sat on. "We saw the boxes in the garage and the tire tracks in the grass. We know she's been here, so why don't you..."

  "Yes, she w
as here, just this afternoon," said Loretta. "She pulled up her truck, we unloaded it, and then she took off. Didn't say where she was..."

  "Did she have a girl with her?"

  "A girl?" Now it was Mrs. Ripken's turn to irritate them. "Yes, she did as a matter of fact. A girl who was the daughter of a friend, I believe she said. Her name was...Ellen. Ellen Morris. Mother lives out near Bend, father lives up around Seattle somewheres...or maybe it was Spokane, I really don't recall. I believe Lucy was giving her a ride from Bend up that way. I think they were going to rent a car and..."

  "You think they were going to rent a car? How did they get to the rental place?"

  "Why, I took them there from the truck lot," said Loretta. "But then I left them there before they, well, suffice it to say I never actually saw her get the car, so..."

  "What about those tracks on the lawn?"

  "Oh, I made those earlier. Truck was in my way, half unloaded, and I didn't want to make Lucy move it."

  "I bet if we went out and looked at those tracks and then at the tires on that fancy ass Beamer out there they wouldn't match," said Devereaux.

  "And then we could haul Mrs. Graves here in for being an accessory. Maybe haul Mrs. Ripken in too."

  Loretta got steely. "Accessory to what? Go ahead, gentlemen. Go sniff your tracks. But if you think for one minute that's going to give you grounds for arresting us, you are dreaming. Since I am licensed to practice law in six states including California, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, I would know."

  "That right?" said Larsen. She had his attention.

  "Yes, sir," said Loretta, and she suddenly smiled radiantly. "Praise the Lord."

  "Huh?" said Devereaux.

  "I said praise the Lord," said Loretta. "You have a problem with that?"

  "Praise the Lord?" said Larsen. "Pardon me, but...you are beginning to piss me off, lady," he said to Loretta. "Don't waste my time talking about..."