Safe from Harm (9781101619629)

by Evans, Stephanie Jaye

  It didn’t.

  “And each time Phoebe sees her dad with his new wife, her mom would cry and carry on about how when she was young she could have married a rich guy, she could have had any man because she was that good-looking but she chose Phoebe’s dad because it was true love and then this rich . . . witch comes and steals him and did Phoebe have any idea what an ugly, fat, tub Lizabeth was in high school, so that’s real fun, right?”

  “Jo!”

  Wanderley had put up a hand to stop me but the hand didn’t do it. He swiveled in his seat. “Bear, could you save your moralizing until I’m done here? Would that be okay with you? Would you rather I take Jo into another room and talk to her in private?”

  Annie got up. “You can’t talk to Jo at all without one of us present, not without our permission, and we aren’t giving it.” She started gathering plates and napkins. “I know very well that you know that and I’m offended that you would try to intimidate us. We want to help you and we want Jo to help you but from now on out, Bear and I are both going to say anything we feel we need to. What you call ‘moralizing’ is what Bear and I call ‘parenting’ and we won’t be stopping that anytime soon. Get your boots off my coffee table.”

  Jo said, “Dude.” It was a rare event for Annie Laurie to have a temper flare. Jo was feeling for the young detective.

  Wanderley had whipped his feet down almost before Annie finished her sentence. Annie Laurie disappeared into the kitchen and was making a big racket out of loading the dishwasher.

  “Can she still hear me?” he mouthed.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said.

  “You put your feet on the coffee table,” he said, sotto voce.

  “She’s not mad at me.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it going to be okay if I go ahead with my questions or do I need to wait for her to come back in?”

  I was feeling expansive. I don’t mind Annie Laurie’s temper when it isn’t aimed at me. “You go on,” I said. “I’m here for Jo.”

  Wanderley listened to the clattering going on in the kitchen. Over his shoulder he called, “They’re off the table, Annie Laurie.”

  “They better be,” came back.

  He said, “I won’t do it again, Annie Laurie.”

  Annie Laurie moved to the opening over the kitchen sink so she could see Wanderley. She said, “You better not. I’m not really talking about the boots. You can put your boots on the table if you want to but don’t tell me or Bear to be quiet again.”

  “I’ll try not to. I’m sorry.”

  “When you use words like ‘moralizing,’ you undermine us.” Her arms were crossed.

  “I’m telling you I’m sorry, Annie.” They held gazes.

  Annie relented and nodded.

  “Will you come back in then and sit down?”

  She nodded, dried her hands and resettled herself on the couch. When she was comfortable, Wanderley picked up his questioning.

  “Phoebe’s dad and stepmom knew each other in high school?”

  Jo smiled grimly. “I saw Mrs. Pickersley-Smythe’s yearbook picture. You can hardly recognize her. She was fat and ugly.”

  “Jo,” I said, “that may be the unkindest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

  Jo’s mouth turned down. But her color was raised.

  I ignored Wanderley’s look—he wasn’t stupid, he didn’t say anything this time—and continued, “You are slim and pretty, Jo, and ninety-nine percent of that is because you got lucky with your genes. You got what you got and Lizabeth got what she got and I guarantee you, your life has been easier than Liz’s. So have some compassion.”

  Jo’s face was flaming now, but I wasn’t backing down. There is enough misery in the world without us adding vitriol. I won’t have it in my house.

  Jo took a breath. “Do you honestly think I would ever say something like that to someone? Or talk behind their back that way? This”—she gestured around the circle where we were sitting—“it’s different. You want information—I’m giving you information. I didn’t say she looked like a baboon. I said she was fat and ugly. If you showed Liz’s senior picture to any guy on earth, the guy would say, ‘fat and ugly.’ She needed to see an orthodontist and I promise you she’s had a nose job and she was carrying around thirty or forty pounds more than she is now. I don’t know how many pounds. Enough so you would say ‘fat’ not ‘heavy.’

  “In a way, I’m complimenting her, you know that? Because she isn’t fat and ugly now and I think she must have worked really hard to look the way she does. I don’t think she’s pretty but she looks fine and no one is going to walk past Liz today and think ‘fat and ugly,’ okay?” She turned from me to Wanderley. “Do you want me to be all PC about what I tell you or do you want to hear what I know whether it’s nice or not?”

  Wanderley closed his eyes for a second. “As much as possible, I’d like your impressions. Is that okay, Annie? Bear?”

  We nodded.

  Jo looked to Wanderley for permission to go on, because she was on a roll now. “Like three months after her dad moves out, Phoebe’s mom gets cancer of the throat.” She put her hand up and touched her own smooth, lovely neck. “It’s esophagus cancer.”

  “Esophageal,” corrected Wanderley.

  She ignored him. “It is a totally stink cancer to get. So, for a long time before she knows what she has, Phoebe’s mom can hardly swallow, and she quits smoking, and she’s losing weight and that part she likes. Phoebe’s mom—her name was Jenny—she was a cheerleader and everything in high school. Phoebe showed me her picture and she was naturally blonde blonde—like Barbie-doll blonde. And she was built like a Barbie doll, too. And her dad played football and they looked like Barbie and Ken in high school, these two totally good-looking people. Back then when they were young. But he’s still good-looking for an old guy and she wasn’t and that was even before she got sick and, you know what? Instead of all the cancer warnings they put on cigarettes, they should put a picture of what you look like at forty if you do smoke and what you look like at forty if you don’t, because Phoebe’s mom looked all scabby and old. And she smoked like a haystack—”

  “Like a chimney stack,” I said before I could get a handle on my tongue. Everybody ignored me.

  “But Phoebe’s mom said she lost her looks because Phoebe’s dad didn’t make enough money and he was always fighting with her and then he walked out and she told Phoebe, ‘Who wouldn’t be sick after all that?’ so she didn’t go to the doctor for a long time but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because this kind of cancer, it’s almost always too late when you find out.”

  Jo took a breath and Wanderley and I did, too. Jo and the Apostle Paul are like this about run-on sentences. Annie refilled Jo’s glass a third time from the pitcher she’d set on the table.

  Jo drank and picked her tale back up.

  It was Saturday and after five, so I went to the garage fridge and got Wanderley and me bottles of Shiner Bock and I poured a glass of pinot grigio for Annie.

  Jo said, all casual as though it were apropos of nothing, “Did you know Phoebe drank wine with her folks even though she was barely two years older than me?”

  I said, “Nope.”

  Jo said, “They did.”

  I said, “The ‘nope’ was for you having wine.”

  Wanderley, who was here on his own time, drank from the dark, frosted bottle and sighed.

  “Phoebe told me and Alex what it was like when her mom was sick. It was the worst thing in the whole wide world. I could never have done it.”

  She could have. We can do so much we don’t think we can.

  “She had to do everything. Phoebe did the shopping and the cleaning and the cooking and she would try to cook things her mom liked and that she could swallow. But it got so her mom couldn’t swallow anything.” To
mmy jumped onto the couch and clambered into Jo’s lap. Jo hugged him to her. “Her mom got sicker and sicker. And every minute of every day Jenny was in pain.” Jo looked at Wanderley. “Remember when my dad got shot?” she said, avoiding my eye.

  Wanderley nodded.

  “That was the worst time ever, watching Dad in the hospital pretend he was okay when really he was hurting a lot.”

  Ahhh, my girl. When we’re really suffering, it’s hard to remember that the people who love us are suffering, too.

  “And the thing is, I knew he was going to get better. He wasn’t going to be hurting like that for the rest of his life—he wasn’t going to die. But what Phoebe was dealing with was knowing that as bad as it was, it was only going to get worse. The doctors told her lots of times because they thought her mom should be in a hospice place. Only her mom made Phoebe promise to let her die at home.” Tommy turned circles on Jo’s lap like a cat before settling down to sleep.

  “Phoebe said her grandfather, her mom’s dad, would come around, but he didn’t help any. He’d just rant and rave about how Phoebe should get her dad to ‘do the right thing’ and Phoebe said it’s not like her dad had any more money to send them because he kept telling Phoebe that he wasn’t rich, Liz was rich and he was already doing everything he could. Her grandfather didn’t believe a word and kept saying this was all her father’s fault and that Phoebe’s mom would never have gotten sick if her dad hadn’t left.

  “But it got worse and worse and Phoebe said how she could hear her mom crying at night because the pain was so bad and in the end, Phoebe even had to help her mom shower and use the toilet. Phoebe was afraid that her mom would slip and fall and she was lonely and she was afraid she would hurt her mom. Phoebe’s grandfather wanted to move in and take care of his daughter—he said Phoebe could go back to school that way but Phoebe would never in a million years leave her mom alone, even with her grandfather who, like I said, wasn’t any help. And he drinks.” Jo pulled at Baby Bear until he rested his head and front paws on her lap, dislodging Tommy who grumbled.

  “You know what? If you were the kind of person who would commit suicide, that would have been the time to do it, right? A handful of pills for mom, a handful for you. But she didn’t, did she? Phoebe made it through that. So that’s why I know she wasn’t a quitter.”

  Gently, gently, Wanderley said, “Then why do you think she killed herself, Jo?”

  “I don’t,” Jo said, her face buried in Baby Bear’s coat. “I think someone else killed her.”

  Annie reached over and stroked Jo’s cheek. The idea that Phoebe was killed, not a suicide, well that might be easier for Jo to take than thinking that anything Jo had done, or not done, had contributed to this sad girl’s death.

  Wanderley scooted to the edge of his seat and said, “Work that out for me, Jo.”

  Jo said nothing.

  Wanderley said, “Phoebe was in the house when you got home, do I have that right?”

  Jo nodded.

  “And you found her in your bedroom?”

  Jo nodded.

  “She didn’t say anything?”

  Jo bowed her head. “I don’t think she was breathing. Her eyes were open. She didn’t move her eyes. They were like doll eyes.”

  Wanderley said, “That’s what I thought, Jo. We haven’t gotten the lab results yet, but I don’t believe there was anything you could have done for her. I think Phoebe must have taken something very strong, and once a substance is thoroughly in your system, there’s not a whole lot that can be done. But she was the only one in the house when you got home?”

  Jo said she was.

  “Yet you think Phoebe was murdered.”

  Here Jo faltered. “She must have been. She wouldn’t have killed herself.”

  Wanderley shook his head. I was confused, too. “I’m not sure what you’re saying, Jo. What do you think happened?”

  Here Jo lifted her brown eyes. They were fearless and frank and matter-of-fact.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to find out.”

  • • •

  That brought a storm down on her head. On mine, too, since I seem to be the go-to guy when something goes wrong.

  “Oh, that’s great,” said Wanderley, putting his beer bottle down too hard, considering the wooden coffee table was covered in a sheet of glass. “You know how well that kind of thing worked out for your dad, right? He got a bullet in his stomach. That was a treat, wasn’t it, Bear?”

  Completely unfair, blaming that on me. Not my fault. But I was with Wanderley on not wanting Jo to go trying to “find out” anything. Baby Bear, meanwhile, had picked up on Wanderley’s tone of voice, and he’d gotten to his feet in front of Jo and barked in a firm and authoritative manner at the detective—not threatening, mind you. Baby Bear was just laying down some boundaries for Wanderley. I’m not allowed to yell at Jo; Baby Bear wasn’t going to tolerate it from a near stranger. The barking woke up Tommy, who didn’t know what the upset was about, but he was on Baby Bear’s side, whatever it was. He hopped off the sofa and barked at everybody indiscriminately. Mr. Wiggles opened his sleepy eyes, scanned the group, then dropped his head back onto his paws and picked up his snoring again.

  Annie Laurie went over and took Jo’s face in her hands and made Jo look her in the eyes.

  “Josephine Amelia, we’ve given you a lot of privileges in the last year or so, haven’t we? You got the phone you asked for, and we aren’t monitoring your computer use anymore. We let you spend the whole summer alone in New York, and that was a scary thing for us. You would hate to lose those privileges, am I right?”

  Jo’s gaze didn’t waver. “Yes. I would.”

  Annie Laurie nodded her head. “Then we understand each other?”

  “Yes.”

  Baby Bear gave a final “woof” as if to make certain that Wanderley understood, too, and then subsided at Jo’s feet. Tommy did a business of staring everyone down so we knew how tough he was, not any easy thing to carry off when your tail curls over your back and leaves your anus out in the open for all the world to see. Then he noticed that Wanderley had left a crust of sandwich on his plate, so he ran over to see if Wanderley would consider giving it to him.

  Wanderley went over everything again. And again, and again.

  I finally got him to the door. He was halfway out when he said, “Hey, Annie Laurie, thanks for coming to Molly’s party. I look forward to seeing you there.” Annie said it was her pleasure and after the door closed she turned to me with her eyebrows arched and said, “What party?”

  • • •

  Saturday night, we were all ready for bed early. We made up a bed on the family room couch for Jo. She wouldn’t go upstairs by herself. She wouldn’t go in her room at all. We kept our bedroom door open so we could hear her if she needed us.

  Three big Rubbermaid boxes of books blocked the pugs in the kitchen. Baby Bear stepped right over them, but they were the Great Wall of China for the pugs. That didn’t matter, though. They had no plans to stay in the kitchen. The pugs ignored their denim pillows and the fuzzy beanbags we’d laid out in the kitchen and cried piteously to be let into our room. Piteously and relentlessly and pugs don’t cry like dogs. They ululate. I looked it up. Skip the first definition, which pretty much says to howl like a dog—strike the whole dog-noise thing right out of your mind, because that’s not what pugs do. They hang their proficiency on the second definition: “to utter howling sounds, as in shrill, wordless lamentation; wail.” Their cry is piercing and high-pitched and unendurable.

  I could have held out, but Annie Laurie gave in pretty quickly. I fetched their furry beanbags and put them on the floor next to Annie’s side of the bed because she has more floor room and because Tommy was treating me like a child molester. The pugs gave me injured looks and curled up without another protest. Baby Bear slept on the floor next to Jo—Annie Laurie an
d I fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  I’d completely forgotten the snoring, and when the appalling sound began and Annie sprang up, I started laughing. Annie whacked me with her pillow, and Tommy added his tremolo to Mr. Wiggle’s gravel-grinding exhalations and then Annie got the giggles, too. I got her my Bose headphones and found some swim plugs for my ears and we went back to sleep. I’d have slept until morning had it not been for the pug farts.

  I woke up gasping in a miasma of gas. Choking, I stumbled to the window, yanking on it twice before giving up and opening the French door in our bedroom that leads to the backyard. I rushed out and stood there sucking in the fresh air before I even had a thought about Annie Laurie. I stuck my head back in the door—Annie Laurie lay still and quiet, breathing regularly. I decided not to wake her up. Mr. Wiggles and Tommy stirred and stretched and got out of their beds and strolled outside to pollute the sweet air of Sugar Land with the noxious emissions from their backsides. Mr. Wiggles had a self-conscious air about him, but not Tommy. I lit a balsam and cedar Yankee Candle and turned on the ceiling fan. Note to self: no beans for the pugs. None. Not one. Ever, ever, ever.

  From: Walker Wells

  To: Merrie Wells

  Hey, sweetheart. What’s up? Listen, are you still going to the Broadway Church of Christ? Because if you aren’t happy there, if you haven’t made a connection, there are some others you might want to visit. Maybe I could fly up and we could visit one together. If you aren’t happy at Broadway, I know some people at Sunset.

  I want you to find your church, Merrie Elizabeth. It’s important to be in a community of believers.

  From: Merrie Wells

  To: Walker Wells

  Uh, Dad? What’s up?

  Fourteen