The beds had clean sheets on them and a turndown service presentation. The dirty dishes in the sink had been washed and put away, the dishwasher unloaded. There were new rolls of toilet paper on all the holders and the paper had been folded into points—not part of our regular regimen. There were lines in the upstairs carpet from the vacuum cleaner. The towels that had been left in the dryer were folded and stacked on the kitchen counter. The houseplants had been watered; a little too much, but still. In our bathroom was a vase of yellow roses next to the sink Annie used.
“What on earth?” said Annie.
“Your sister?” I asked. Stacy lived a few minutes away from us and has a key to the house.
“You think?” said Annie, dropping her luggage and walking through the house, noticing the stacks of squared-off magazines, the dust-free piano, the straightened throw rugs.
Uh, no. I didn’t. I have a good imagination, but I couldn’t imagine my sister-in-law coming over and cleaning the house for us. Stacy is . . . not the greatest homemaker in the world. I’m not blaming her—she’s got three boys, six, eight and ten, and her husband Chester is never there to help her. But even with paid housekeepers coming in once a week, Stacy’s level of disorganization, and her penchant for acquiring stuff that has to be stored, means that her house maintains a constant level of barely controlled chaos. The state our house had been in when we’d left was better than Stacy’s is on a day-to-day basis.
We called Stacy but after she listened breathlessly to our questions, over the sounds of her three sons trying to take each other apart, she asked us if we had lost our minds. “You find that house fairy”—the first time we’d heard the expression—“and send it to my house. I swear, Annie, you always do have all the luck, I don’t know why, I work ten times as hard as you and—Wynn, you pour that pitcher over your brother’s head and so help me—”
We heard a splash.
“Gotta go.” Stacy hung up. Annie Laurie and I agreed it was unlikely that Stacy had produced the wonder we had come home to.
While Annie made a few more inquiring calls, I unpacked our luggage, left the stuff for Annie to put away and stored the bags under Merrie’s bed. After a shower and a bowl of cereal for dinner, I sat down to read my Bible, finding my place by the frayed silk ribbon attached to the binding.
There was a loose knot tied in the ribbon. Huh.
• • •
That first visit, the big visit, we chalked up to some über-friendly neighbor whom we had accidentally left a key with, or to the Ladies’ Bible Class, or to . . . you know what? We didn’t know. But it’s not like it was a threatening gesture, so we ultimately let it go.
After that? The small things? The mended vase and the organized pantry and all the other little kindnesses? Secretly, I thought Annie Laurie was doing it to please me. Turns out Annie Laurie secretly thought I was doing it to please her.
• • •
Wanderley looked at me from under that unibrow.
“House fairy, Bear? Really?”
I shrugged.
“So when did the house fairy visits stop?”
“They stopped tonight, James,” Annie Laurie said.
Seven
Detective Wanderley gave a grunt and stood up.
“I’ve got to get to the Pickersley-Smythes. As their pastor, Bear, do you want to come?”
Of course I didn’t want to go. But of course I did.
I slipped on a sweatshirt and picked up my Bible. I fingered the new knot in the ribbon marker. There were eight now in the ribbon. If Phoebe had been trying to tell me something, I wasn’t getting it.
Wanderley drove. His car was an immaculate black late-’90s BMW 325i. There were no fast-food wrappers, cigarette ashes, or empty water bottles. No dust or dirt, either. The floor mats were clean and the car smelled of Windex or something like it. There was a princess-pink car seat strapped in the backseat, with a black satchel next to it, evidence of Molly, Wanderley’s two-year-old daughter, whose mother had declined to marry Wanderley. I understood there was some friction between them over that.
We pulled out of my driveway, past the emergency vehicles parked in the street. Even at this late hour, some of my neighbors were standing in their yards, watching.
Wanderley said, “What isn’t she telling us?”
My mind was still on the knots in my ribbon, on what that was supposed to mean. “Who, Phoebe?” I was looking out the window. Mrs. Hsu mouthed, “What’s going on?” as we passed. I waved.
“Uh, Jo. She’s holding something back.”
“She’s not holding anything back. What makes you think she’s holding something back? What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
Wanderley glanced over at me, then back to the road. “I’m a cop, Bear. Jo feels guilty about something. You don’t see that? I want to know what she feels guilty about.” Wanderley drove around the golf course and changed topics entirely. “Where do you think the girl got the drugs?”
“Phoebe? I don’t know. What makes you think it was drugs? Maybe she had a heart attack. That can happen to kids,” I said though I thought it was probably drugs.
“I’ve seen people dead from heart attacks and I’ve seen people dead from drugs and my money is on drugs. Where do you think she got them from?”
“How would I know? She’s got money, and she goes to Clements. Does it need to be harder than that?”
Clements High School, Jo’s high school, is an award-winning, fiercely competitive public high school, and too many of the kids have too much money. Some of them have an entrepreneurial streak—the results are predictable.
Wanderley nodded. “It would be from someone she knows, though. Kids don’t buy from strangers.”
There was a long pause. “It was your house she came to. Jo’s room she died in.”
Now he had my attention.
“Okay, pull over. Stop the car. I mean it, Wanderley. Stop the dang car.”
Wanderley pulled to the curb and put the car in park. He put his emergency lights on.
“Are you saying you think Phoebe overdosed on drugs Jo gave her? Is that what you’re saying? Because that’s crazy. Annie Laurie and I aren’t stupid. We’d know if Jo was using drugs. You think she could have competed in that summer program if she was a drug user? There’s no way. You’re out of line, James.”
Wanderley’s hands flexed on the steering wheel. He turned to give me one of his really irritating looks of pity. “Bear, of course she could have competed at that ballet school if she was a drug user—she might have felt she had to use if she was going to be competitive. I guarantee you, no doubt about it, lots of those dancers use. They’re athletes, Bear. You don’t think athletes use drugs? Don’t you read the paper? Listen to the news?”
“Jo does not use drugs.” My heart was doing that hard thump-thump that hurts your chest.
“Can I drive on, Bear? Or you want me to take you home? I can handle this on my own.”
“No. I’m coming.”
Wanderley considered me for a while and then pulled back onto the road. We were in the Sweetwater neighborhood now. The homes were all four to nine thousand square feet, with garages that held fleets of cars.
“Don’t get all defensive on me,” Wanderley began, then looked over like I was supposed to say, Okay, I won’t get all defensive when you attack the integrity of my fifteen-year-old daughter. Go right on ahead. I gave him back a look that said, Be happy I’m not tearing your head off.
Wanderley sighed and went on. “From what I saw, I’m guessing Phoebe took some kind of opioid. Or a barbiturate. Nothing she could have gotten over the counter would have done this to her. Right now, back at your house, the team is going to be taking Jo’s room apart, looking for a stash—”
My fist hit the passenger window. “They won’t find anything.”
Wanderley said, al
l slow and calm the way people do when they’re talking to someone they consider irrational, which just makes the irrational person feel more irrational—and murderous, if my own experience is anything to go off from—“And even if they don’t find anything, they aren’t going to see that as conclusive. No one knows how long Jo was there before she called you.”
I exploded. “You’re saying you think Jo would have been scrambling to save her own fanny if she came home and found Phoebe in that state? You don’t think she would have called nine-one-one right away?”
Again, very measured. “Bear, she didn’t call nine-one-one right away. She didn’t call them at all. You called.”
The hamster wheels in my head started spinning.
Wanderley continued. “She could have had plenty of time to hide or dispose of something—that would have been the smart thing to do, and Jo is a smart girl. She could have had a friend come by and pick it up for her. These are all possibilities the investigative team is going to look into. Because everyone is going to want to know why Phoebe came to your house, took a lethal dose of drugs, and died there. You get me? You see where they’re going to be coming from? This isn’t personal, Bear. It’s not between you and me.”
Yeah. Not personal. Here’s the thing: if one of my daughters is involved, then, yeah. It’s personal, bub.
“It’s hard for me to imagine you could seriously think a fifteen-year-old girl could be mixed up in selling drugs,” I said.
Wanderley said, “Hah!” and shot me a look. “For a tough guy, Bear, you are such an innocent. You think you’re living in Pleasantville? Sure, I’d be surprised if a fifteen-year-old girl was selling drugs on her own—surprised but not shocked. More likely she’d be delivering for someone else, like a boyfriend. What do you think? Does Jo know anyone like that?”
Wanderley gave me another sidelong look. See, I’m glad I’m not a cop. It’s Wanderley’s job to assume the worst about everybody. It’s my job to assume the best. I look at Jo and her friends and I see great kids. And my Jo is not the kind of fawning female who would let someone use her. She’s more secure than that. At least, she was before The School of American Ballet program. Before she learned they would not be offering her a year-round position. Jo has had some hard months. It’s not easy to give up a dream. But drugs? No. Not Jo.
“What do you know about the Pickersley-Smythes?” Wanderley asked.
I told him what I knew, the basics. Pretty much repeated the speech Liz had given at the church’s new member’s class—about turning a packaging company around straight out of school with her newly earned MBA. Told him about Phoebe’s mom dying, and how she’d had to change high schools and come live with her dad about six months ago. I didn’t tell him about her fight with Jo, or the incident with Jonathan Reese.
In two minutes, we would be at the Pickersley-Smythes. I had to get my head in a different place if I was going to be any use to them. I said a silent prayer and then forced a conversation change.
“How’s Molly?” I asked.
Wanderley didn’t take his eyes off the road.
“She’s got to be close to three now?” I said.
“In about two weeks. October twenty-fifth. The party is the twenty-seventh.”
We drove in silence past the dark homes, some lit up, some clearly down for the night.
“You want to come?” Wanderley said.
“What?”
“Would you and Annie Laurie want to come to the party?”
No, I didn’t want to go to his daughter’s birthday party. He had just insulted my daughter. I’m not big on parties for three-year-olds, anyway. The food stinks and I’m no good at the games. I didn’t know why on earth he would want us there. “Sure,” I said. There was no enthusiasm in my voice, but we didn’t have anything going on that weekend and I don’t like to lie—not even those little social “white lies.” And I don’t know how to tell a man that I didn’t want to go to his little girl’s birthday party.
Wanderley didn’t say anything. He nodded and pulled into the ring road that circled in front of the Pickersley-Smythes’ home, pulled his car to a stop, and turned it off. We sat there together listening to the engine tick. Two fathers of daughters, coming to tell a father the worst news there is, that his daughter was dead.
There have been times when I have been on hand when a parent learned of a child’s death. Usually, it was an expected death. Four times it’s been after a long struggle with cancer. When I was growing up, I don’t recall ever hearing of a child dying of cancer. Fifty years later, I’ve known several children who spent most of their short lives fighting a foe who would not let loose. But when a child dies from cancer, the pain is mingled with relief and resignation—the suffering has been so great and has gone on so long, and if the parents are believers, they take comfort in knowing they will someday see their child again. I’m not saying that makes the pain go away; from what I understand, the pain becomes a part of the family. They are forever changed. They go on, have joys and happiness. But there is never a day, not an hour, when the precious lost one is not remembered. Grief becomes a sixth sense. They tell me that when they meet someone new, they know, within minutes, if that person has also lost a child.
There have been times of unexpected death, too, typically car crashes. Three instances came to mind—all young men, and all driving gorgeous sports cars their parents had bought them. There was no resignation from the parents there, just fury, and horror, and a well of guilt and blame so deep that two of the couples I knew were never able to climb out from it. The third couple still vibrate with the pain even twelve years after the accident, but they have held on to each other and to God. A younger daughter has given them grandchildren. I’m sure that helps.
But never have I had to tell a parent that his child may have committed suicide. Because that’s what Phoebe had to have done. I didn’t really think this was an accident. There was too much deliberation for it to have been anything else. Never have I had to tell a father that his daughter, his baby, his love and his heart, had felt such despair that she’d chosen dying over living. I couldn’t help thinking of my own girls. What if it had been Merrie or Jo? Oh, God, please take the very thought from me.
“Give me a second?” I asked Wanderley and at his nod, I stepped out of the car and called Merrie. The phone rang twice and she picked up. Tears pricked my eyes when I heard her voice, bright and happy, party noises behind her.
“Hey, Dad! Late call. What’s up?”
I cleared my throat. “Wanted to hear your voice, is all.”
Now there was concern in her voice. “What’s up, Dad? Everyone okay?”
I paced the drive, the gravel scrunching under my feet. “We’re all okay. We got some bad news tonight. You don’t know the people. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. I just needed to hear your voice.”
“Okay.”
“And make sure you know how much I love you, baby girl.”
She was subdued now. “I know it, Dad. I love you, too.”
“And if there’s ever anything wrong, you’ll let me know. You won’t try to solve it on your own. There’s nothing so bad we can’t fix it together, right?”
“Dad. You’re scaring me. You swear everyone’s all right?”
I nodded, my throat too full to speak. In the background, a boy was urging Merrie back to the party.
“Dad?”
“Yes, baby. Your world is safe.”
Long, listening pause.
“Okay then. You going to be all right, Dad?”
“I’m good.”
“Do you want to talk some more?”
Wanderley was out of his car, waiting for me.
“No. Gotta go. Go with God, Merrie Elizabeth.” I shut my phone off, powered it all the way down. During the next hour or so, I wouldn’t be taking any calls.
Wanderley said, “You ready
?” As if anyone ever could be.
“Yeah.”
• • •
The yard was lit up with landscaping lights, but the house itself was dark. It was close to midnight. We’d be waking the family up with this news.
When we walked up to the beveled-glass door, a motion sensor turned the front porch light on, startling us both. We could see the huge, white, Persian tomcat sitting on the carpeted stairs, blinking at us through the glass. Wanderley rang the doorbell. I prayed that God would give me the words to help this family endure the unendurable. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
There was no response, and Wanderley rang again. One of the three-year-old twins appeared at the head of the stairs looking down at us. He was wearing Spider-Man pajamas, the kind with the feet sewn in. My throat tightened and I coughed. Wanderley touched me with his elbow.
“Cowboy up, old man,” he said.
I nodded.
Mark appeared beside the child, touched his face and said something. The boy shook his head and clung to his father’s leg. Mark lifted the child to his hip and came down the stairs. He looked through the glass door, recognized me, and set the boy down to turn the dead bolt. Mark wore black, silky sleep pants and a long, elaborately embroidered kimono. His feet were bare.
The heavy door swung open and Mark said, “Bear? What is it?”
Wanderley held his ID out to Mark and asked if we could come in.
Mark stepped back reluctantly and we went in. He switched on one of the lamps that sat on a dark wood chest.
His son said, “Chocolate milk.”
“You go get in bed, Tanner, and Daddy will bring it to you as soon as I can.” The boy protested but Mark was firm, and with a whimper, the boy climbed the stairs. A door shut.
Mark led us into a study. There was a mahogany table that served as a desk and a wall of beautifully bound books. This room, too, was a shrine to the twins. A picture of Lizabeth cradling her bare, bulging belly, a picture of the sleeping newborns curled together on a black velvet throw, the ubiquitous Texas shot of the children in a field of bluebonnets. There were none of Phoebe.
Safe from Harm (9781101619629) Page 10
