A Family of Strangers

by Emilie Richards

  The message I’d intercepted on Wendy’s voice mail might have come from a wrong number. But if my sister was hanging around Against the Wind at night, an entirely new and troubling set of questions had to be asked. Tomorrow, I would arrive sometime after eight and wait to see if Craig Leone showed up. If he did, I would find a way to ask about “Kim.”

  For now I’d seen enough. The neighborhood might be seedy, but the street was well-lighted and traveled. Saturday I would have to rise early to get to Delray Beach in time to make my meetings, but visiting Against the Wind would be worth the inconvenience.

  My third stop, an independent pharmacy, was along my route to Confidence K-9s. I’d never filled a prescription here and probably never would, but I hoped the pharmacist in the tiny strip mall had time to talk to me.

  The roped-off parking lot, shared with an abandoned taqueria, was in the midst of being repaved, although at the moment, no one was working on it. The temperature was only sixty, so I parked on the street under heavy shade and left the windows down for Bismarck. He was more than capable of scaring off bad guys who reached in to unlock a door.

  Purse tucked under my arm, I carefully made my way inside. The store was crowded with medical supplies and equipment, but not with customers. Unlike chain pharmacies, there were no aisles of gift items or snack foods, and I didn’t see a single greeting card. Homeopathic remedies, though? The store had a remedy for everything from acne to whooping cough.

  At the back only one pharmacist was working behind the counter, busy mixing, shaking and labeling. When he finally looked up, he moved to my section and peered at me over frameless glasses. A man nearing the age of retirement, mostly bald, neck spilling over his collar, he thoroughly looked me over before he smiled.

  We chatted a moment. I told him the day was still pleasantly cool, and that I’d easily found parking on the street. Then I pulled a plastic bag out of my purse and handed it to him.

  My lie seemed harmless. “A friend is renting out her apartment over the winter, and after she left town she realized she hadn’t cleaned out her medicine cabinet. The renters come next week. I have her spare key, and she asked me to mail any prescription drugs to her.”

  He held up the bag. “This is what you found?”

  I nodded. “Thing is? I don’t think she has a problem with illegal drugs. Nothing like that. But there seem to be an awful lot of...” I held up my palms. “Narcotics? Sleeping pills? I looked some of them up, and now I’m worried.”

  He opened the bag and moved pill bottles around, setting them on the counter after he examined each one, until he had a neat little row. “Quite a collection. And you’re right about what they are.”

  “Some of them are pretty outdated. So maybe she’s not taking them often.”

  “I hope you’re right.” He swiped the bottles back into my bag. “If she left without this stash, hopefully they aren’t that important to her. People fill prescriptions and don’t finish them. Eventually they get more. They pile up. That could be what’s going on here. But she shouldn’t be mixing these. Does she seem foggy or unusually tired?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” My mother hadn’t said anything to lead me in either direction. On the other hand, Mom looked at Wendy through rose-colored glasses.

  “Maybe she has problems sleeping,” he said.

  “Could be.”

  “If she is mixing prescriptions, adding this to that because the sleep medications aren’t working, then she could be in trouble.”

  “I’m going to mention that. She won’t like it, but she needs to know.”

  “People die mixing drugs, or drugs and alcohol. With some of these prescriptions, even over-the-counter drugs could be fatal in high enough doses.”

  I made a face to show him how horrified I was. “Like what?”

  He ticked off a couple I knew and then added, “Diphenhydramine.”

  An economy-size bottle of diphenhydramine resided in Wendy’s medicine cabinet. “What’s that?”

  “Most commonly? Benadryl. It makes some people sleepy, although not everyone, and in the right dose it’s safe enough by itself. Mixed with other medications, though, it can make patients feel dizzy and disoriented.”

  I nodded to encourage him, because he was doing my work for me. “She did have a large bottle in the cabinet.”

  “Want a sad story? Not long ago a baby died when his caretaker gave him an adult dose to knock him out. It was all over the news. So even for an adult, mixed with some of these drugs?” He brushed his hand over the bag and shook his head. “I hope your friend’s doctor warned her.”

  The store was warm enough, but I was chilled to my bone marrow. “Adult doses must be very different than doses for children.”

  “Different doses and different drugs. Drugs for adults aren’t always tested for children.” He handed back the bag. “Are you really going to send these to her?”

  “No, I’m going to flush them all down the nearest toilet. I’m not taking chances they could be intercepted. She’ll just have to go to a local doctor and get a new prescription if she needs something.”

  I thanked him and left. How much Benadryl had my sister been giving her children for their allergies, which so far, from my own observations, seemed to be nonexistent? Had Wendy been drugging her girls with anything else?

  I wondered if I was being paranoid. Maybe Wendy hadn’t connected the problems the girls were having on school mornings with a drug given at night. Maybe she’d been busy adjusting dosages, trying, like any good mom, to find the perfect solution to whatever problem she’d been addressing.

  Or maybe not.

  I put the possibilities out of my mind for the moment. Wendy wasn’t here to tell me, and right now her absence was the larger problem.

  My head hurt.

  I made the rest of the drive and parked in front of the kennel office, stripping off the jacket that covered my tank top. As we jogged, Teo and I would warm quickly.

  Somebody buzzed Bismarck and me inside, and dogs in the nearest kennels barked and howled in greeting. Janice, who was coming down the hallway, smiled stiffly and told me where to find Teo, then stopped to talk to Bismarck, who appeared to think she was pretty swell. She rose a notch in my estimation. Bismarck is a great judge of character.

  Teo was out on one of the lawns tossing Frisbees to two beautiful silvery dogs with bobbed tails. When he saw me, he let himself out and fastened the gate behind him. Bismarck got most of his attention, but he did smile at me first.

  “Gorgeous dogs,” I said, trying to focus on the dogs instead of the man.

  “Australian shepherds. Blue merles. Their owner thinks they need more training, but what they really need is exercise.”

  When he finished roughhousing a little with his best canine friend, he stood and gave my outfit the once-over. I was wearing one of Wendy’s gifts, lavender-and-black-patterned running shorts and a lavender tank with mesh inserts. Very little of me was left to the imagination, although Teo might harbor enough memories to make up the gap.

  “Nice duds.”

  “It’s going to warm up. Still want to go?”

  “Sure. I figure you need to run the other way on the road and see what’s at the very end.”

  “Your local taxidermist?”

  “My house.”

  “I assumed you lived here.”

  “No, Janice’s family lives in the ranch house at the edge of the property. They keep an eye on things when I’m not on-site.”

  “So, you’re ready?”

  He smiled as if reading my mind. “Do I need to change my clothes? My leg?”

  I winced. “I was not going to ask.”

  “If I ever decide to try out for the Olympics or just want to ramp up my workout, I might need something more efficient, but this leg’s high-tech and all-purpose. It’s fine for jogging.”
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  “How long did it take to become fine?”

  “A year and a half of physical therapy. A lot of appointments with a prosthetist, which are ongoing, a lot of adjustments, a lot of exercise. A whole lot of falls. I ended up on my nose or ass more times than I can count.” He paused. “A lot of money.”

  “You forgot a lot of prayer and a lot of cursing.”

  “More of the latter than the former. My mother did most of the praying.”

  “I said my share of prayers for you, Teo, even though I didn’t know everything that was going on.”

  “You were praying?” He sounded surprised by the act, more than the recipient.

  “All those years of Catholic school come in handy.”

  We walked along the corridor and out the gate to the parking lot. “I did say some prayers after I killed John Quayle,” Teo said.

  Now I was surprised. “Asking forgiveness?”

  “Forgiveness for saving your life? Never. Asking God why He created someone like Quayle in the first place.” We were walking faster now, and in a moment we broke into a slow jog with Bismarck running happily beside Teo.

  “Did you get any answers?” I asked.

  “The usual lack of them, unless you count a greater sense of peace with everything that happened. I don’t know why people like Quayle exist, if they’re born or made or somewhere in between. But I do believe that trying to stop them from hurting other people is a calling.”

  “Training dogs for protection and security work seems like a good way to do that. Teaching criminal justice seems like a good way, too.”

  “So does bringing cold cases to light so they can finally be solved.”

  I was pleased he thought so, and warmed by such an immediate answer. “They aren’t though, not most of the time. Podcasts like ours, television shows, special newspaper series? Too often the cases were cold for good reason. Real evidence remains scanty. Investigators pull the cases back into the sunlight for a while, then shove them into folders and file them away again. Not usually because they don’t care. Because they have to concentrate on the ones they might actually be able to close.”

  “So you don’t think you’re doing any good?”

  I thought about that for a little while before I answered. “Not all police departments are good ones, so the publicity can make them take notice. Whatever we can add to a case might pay off someday. And there’s always the chance we’ll hit the jackpot.”

  “A gambling woman.”

  “Not just that. I also like to think people learn to be careful from listening to true crime reporting, that they pay attention to the way a crime happened, and they’re more alert in their everyday lives. They may not be able to spot a psychopath, but they may consider the possibility.”

  We continued to chat as we ran, moving to more comfortable topics. Eventually we passed Marvin’s Masterpieces, and I was disappointed that instead of my long-imagined unicorn, Marvin had a well-preserved longhorn steer on display in front of an oversize barn beside an undersize house.

  Teo gave the steer a nod. “Meet Houston. Marvin loved that old steer. When Houston finally went to that big cattle range in the sky, Marvin hauled his carcass into the barn with a tractor and spent weeks preserving him as a memorial.”

  “A friend of yours? Marvin, not Houston.”

  “Marvin prefers animals over people, but sometimes I can entice him out of his workshop if I promise to listen to lectures on the relative values of glass eyes versus acrylic.”

  I was beginning to tire at exactly the point when Teo slowed to a walk and pointed ahead. “My place.”

  The house was raised off the ground on brick pilings, with a wide shaded porch surrounding the front and the sides. I thought there must be a second story because there was a gable in the sloping tin roof.

  “Wow, this is cute. Isn’t this what they call a cracker house?”

  “The main house was more of a shack than a cracker, but what was left after a century of hard living was redesigned by a local architect who added the second story and porches, adjusted the slope of the roof and lived here himself for a while. It’s small, but it has a lot of living space.”

  “Plenty, I’d say.”

  “I was lucky to find it and luckier to buy it. Not everyone wants to live this far from Seabank, and Marvin and Houston scare off the rest.”

  “What’s in the back?”

  “A screened porch. I have coffee out there every morning to watch the wildlife. It’s all woods behind me. I’ve bought enough acres to keep a developer from eyeing the rest.”

  “I can see you here.” I paused. “But maybe not. It’s isolated. You never really liked to be alone.”

  “I’m surrounded by people and dogs all day long. These days I like having a retreat.”

  “I have people around me, day and night, but luckily I live alone in half a duplex. Unfortunately, my wildlife lives in the other half, rides a Harley-Davidson and shows up around midnight, sometimes with lady friends.”

  “I have something to give you. And I have lemonade to go with it.”

  I needed something to drink. I pinched my tank top and wiggled it to create ventilation as I followed him inside.

  The entryway was fronted by stairs up to the next floor, along with a woodstove that probably heated the entire house. Past the stairs, a great room spread back to the screened porch, with a kitchen and dining area to the right and what was probably a bedroom to the left. The open floor plan made the space feel larger than it was, but it was still cozy, with different areas well defined by casual furniture.

  He pointed toward the back. “I’ll get the lemonade. Try the screened porch.”

  The porch was furnished with vintage rattan, the style of sofa and chairs common in the fifties and sixties, disdained in the decades afterward and sought after by collectors now. The cushions were earth tone florals appropriate anywhere from the Adirondacks to the Everglades. Potted hibiscus added more color, and just in front of me, a lemon tree was beginning to fruit. There were still enough blossoms to lightly scent the air.

  Teo dropped off two icy glasses of lemonade and returned with a plate of bakery cookies, settling next to me on the sofa, one seat cushion between us.

  I helped myself to a cookie. “This really is a small piece of heaven.” The woods behind the house were dotted with large oaks hung with Spanish moss. Between porch and woods, a patio fronted a small yard planted with flowering shrubs.

  “I never cared where I lived before,” he said. “I wasn’t home often enough to worry. Now it seems important.”

  I turned so I could watch him. “I’ve never taken the time to do much with my place. Appearances are so important to my mother and sister. I think I made a conscious effort to be sure they weren’t important to me. Then a couple of months ago I went to an art show and fell in love with an artist’s work. There’s something about her beach scenes that I love. So I bought one, two little girls in bathing suits playing on a beach at twilight, and I hung it over my sofa. Now I think about what to add next, which is dangerous, because my place is the size of this porch.”

  “I started noticing how colorless my apartment was when I had to spend so much time there during recovery. Somebody told me about this house. I had money from a worker’s compensation settlement. That’s how I was able to put a down payment on the kennels, too. I made an offer on the spot.”

  “Good call.”

  He set down his glass, hardly touched. “I didn’t bring you here to show you how great my new life is. I have something for you.”

  He started to stand, but I held him back. “Is it? Great, I mean?”

  He cocked his head. “Parts of it.”

  “You seem to like what you do.”

  He waited. I didn’t know what else to say, but I tried. “You’ve been through a lot.” I wondered if I could
have come up with anything lamer if I’d tried for a month.

  He finally smiled. “When I said I like being here alone, I meant it. Is that what you want to know?”

  I shrugged. “This is all very confusing.”

  “Good. You spend so much time sorting and reporting facts. Just let whatever is happening here move at its own pace.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt again. Me, either.”

  “Are you planning to hurt me?”

  “I didn’t plan to the last time, either.”

  “Quayle pulled the trigger. I survived him. I plan to keep surviving whatever you throw at me.”

  He got up and this time I let him. We’d said enough. And maybe he was right; maybe it was time to simply let things happen.

  I had no idea what he would bring back, but I didn’t expect a lone piece of folded paper, edges frayed where it had been ripped from a spiral notepad. I doubted we’d had to jog all this way for a sheet of paper that would have fit in his pocket.

  He held it out. “I still have friends in the sheriff’s office.”

  “Yeah, I met one of them.”

  “I figured I could do this much.”

  I unfolded the paper and stared at three names and a few scrawled sentences to go with them. Then I looked up. Nearly two weeks had passed since my life-altering phone call with Wendy. While most days I felt like I wasn’t making any progress toward helping her, these three names could be a huge breakthrough.

  “I have a feeling this isn’t the way your friend should be spending his time,” I said.

  “For the most part arrest records are public.”

  Records might be public, but even though Sophie had amazing snooping skills, she didn’t have access to all the resources that the sheriff’s office did.